Life
by ojuzu
Summary: Kakashi decided not to bow to the Council's wishes, and didn't pressure his team into the Chuunin exams. Orochimaru decided to look elsewhere for a new body. Sakura's just trying to deal with everything. 目Team 7目 and 目KabuSaku目 friendship.
1. A Touch of Peace

A/N: This AU is so screwed up I doubt Kishimoto Masashi would be able to untangle canon from it. It started as a drabble-ish short story set either before Sasuke left or after he came back. As most of my short stories seem to, it turned into a long story when I rewrote the ending (which I hadn't been happy with). I'm not sure if it's revealed in this chapter or not, but just to make sure I'll state that this happens several months, possibly more, after the Chuunin exams. The catch is, of course, that Kakashi didn't enter them.

Also, this is my first chaptered fanfiction. I've always found fanfics way hard to write, but this one just wants to keep on going. I'm afraid I'm neglecting my original stuff. Oh well. Enjoy!

* * *

Sakura walked down the street, heading nowhere in particular. She felt particularly relaxed today. Or perhaps the term was apathetic. No, that wasn't it. Perhaps there were no words that described her current state of mind – she certainly couldn't think of any at the moment.

She wove through the crowded civilians as if she didn't notice them, just kept going.

Looking upward.

Eventually she encountered Naruto, grinning brightly and being his usual cheerful idiot self. He offered to take her out for ramen, because it was lunchtime. Surprising herself, she agreed. Naruto chattered about how he'd managed a successful, hilarious prank on his Iruka-sensei (which Inner Sakura laughed about), how nice the owner of Ichiraku's was, and how he'd managed to find a scroll which actually contained writing about something _useful_ for once.

Sakura listened to all this, instead of ignoring him or hitting him for being stupid as she usually would. There was just something odd about today, perhaps. It certainly felt like it. After she was done (Naruto had finished his in under a minute, and ordered another bowl to occupy himself while she ate hers) Sakura smiled and thanked him for the meal, wandering off once again.

She met Sasuke near one of the training grounds, taking a break from his training to sit in a tree. He "Hn"ed at her in greeting. Sakura just smiled back. It wasn't as if he'd answer anything she said anyway – at least, not in Japanese. Uchiha-speak was his native language, and the one he spoke most often. It consisted almost entirely of grunts and glares, with a few insults tossed in, and she didn't feel up to translating today. She waved as she walked off.

Sakura met Kakashi staring at the memorial stone. She didn't know who he was mourning, and didn't want to disturb him to find out. Not today. Instead, she sat down next to him.

After a while, she spoke.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Aa." A simple noise of acknowledgment that he was at least half-listening to her. Fair enough.

"I think people have weather."

"Sou ka?" He was still gazing at the memorial stone, at that one name she couldn't pick out from the others.

"Really. Sometimes they're sunny and happy, sometimes they're storming and broody. Of course, some people have a higher tendency than others for some kinds of weather." Sakura changed position, stretching out on the grass. This would probably kill her clothes, but, as before, the calm feeling made her not care.

Kakashi snorted lightly, finally tearing his gaze from the memorial stone. "Naruto is definitely one of the sunny ones. The kid's a happy, loudmouthed brat."

Sakura blew a nearby bug away from her face. "No, he's more the drizzling type. Sunny on the outside, drearily raining and misting inside."

Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe. What about Sasuke?"

The ant came climbing right back, and she blew at it again. "A mild thunderstorm. Annoying, but not terribly life-threatening."

"He'd glare at you if you told him that." Kakashi redirected his gaze from the distant horizon and aimed it at her. Sakura just shrugged internally. Feeling at peace was weird; it made you do and feel weird things.

"He glares at everyone anyway." Sakura carefully uprooted a grass stem and began to tie it in knots. "Now that's I've gone over the two absent members of our team, it's only fair I do the rest."

"Aa?" There was that noise again. He was still staring at her.

"Like I said, some people are like sunny days and some people are like rainy ones." Sakura crossed her arms in front of her and leaned on them, turning her head slightly to see Kakashi better. She pointed her stem of grass at him lazily. "You, Kakashi-sensei, are a day of clouds."

He leaned his chin on his interlaced hands, elbows on his knees. "Clouds, eh? I like clouds."

"It shows." Sakura contentedly pulled up another stem of grass.

* * *

The next day, the aura of calm was gone. Kakashi-sensei was two hours late (again), and Sakura glared at him in an almost Sasuke-like manner. She even yelled at him later for being a horrible teacher. He stopped, staring directly at her.

"You know what, you're right."

Sakura yelled at him a bit more, until he apologized and promised to teach Naruto and her a few ninjutsu. She even managed to wrangle a taijutsu session for the late afternoon. Sakura resolved to set her sights higher. Maybe she'd even be able to make Sasuke turn off his Sharingan for an entire week—Naruto's few (thus far) techniques usually took way too much chakra and stamina for him to copy, but if Kakashi-sensei actually taught her anything Sasuke hadn't already learned he'd certainly copy it straight off. She needed something to herself for once.

Come to that, Naruto did too. The previous day, while invaded by that strange essence of calm, she'd noticed how many people glared at him. Thinking back, Sakura realized that even in the Academy he hadn't really had anyone who was actually his friend. The only person who could really count as such – apart from old man Ichiraku and his daughter – had been Iruka-sensei. Perhaps Naruto was even less cheerful and happy-go-lucky than she'd thought. And the only really effective jutsu he knew was that weird Kage Bunshin, that she doubted anyone else could do resulting in nearly as much, number-wise. She made a mental note to take something for a sore throat and yell at Kakashi-sensei later about it.

As they were walking to the Hokage's office for their new C-rank, a thought struck Sakura.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei?" He looked at her with a bored expression.

"What?"

"How many times did you have to catch runaway cats when you were a genin?"

Kakashi thought for a while, tapping the side of his face through his mask. "...Two hundred and forty-three! Of course, most of those were repeats..." He shuddered. "Why do they allow cats in Konoha anyway? I'm pretty sure even our dear Sarutobi-sama was scratched by many of them."

Sasuke nearly 'Hn'd as usual, but instead replied. "You know, I think you've got something there. Why?"

Naruto shrugged. "Even with all the time I've spent in the old man's office, I've never found out. Let's go look!" He broke into a jog, making them all hurry to the Sandaime's office.

Of course, even Kakashi-sensei couldn't get the Hokage to tell them why cats were still allowed in Konohagakure. He just cleared his throat, glanced from side to side a few times, then started talking very loudly about the details of their mission. Sakura, to be honest, hadn't paid much attention. She'd be getting the condensed version from Kakashi-sensei later after their taijutsu session, so she didn't need to listen. Of course, she usually did anyway, but something was niggling at the back of her mind. She just couldn't think what...

Sakura could have sworn she heard Naruto mutter about "searching the old man's office later". Well, if he did manage to find out the reason everyone'd always had so many D-ranks involving cats, she'd be just a little bit happier. Maybe that was what was bothering her. Shrugging, she waved goodbye to everyone and went home.

The next morning, Sakura awoke with a phrase echoing in her mind. _Look inside..._ Look inside? From the intonation it was fairly clear that it meant 'look inside yourself'. But what, exactly, was she supposed to be looking for?

With an annoyed sigh, she hauled her lazy ass out of bed and into the shower. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was eight or so. Roughly when Kakashi-sensei had promised to meet them for some real training. Sakura shrugged as she scrubbed at her hair. She was beginning to give up on Kakashi ever being on time. After a leisurely breakfast, she set out into the cloudy day.

As she reached the bridge that had become their regular meeting place, Sakura was surprised to see that she wasn't the first one there. Kakashi-sensei was already lounging against the rail, flipping through one of his Icha Icha books. Honestly, she should just burn them all...

Instead of following her urge of taking a lighter to the book in his hand, she mimicked him. Lounging against the opposite side of the bridge in exactly the same manner, she pulled out a book on chakra theory she'd bugged (okay, shouted) him into letting her borrow the day before. It really was quite interesting. Apparently, chakra was very much like physical muscles. Boys naturally had more than girls, but couldn't control it as well. The author compared this tendency to the fact that girls seemed to be more flexible, while boys were stronger. She – Sakura assumed it was a she – advised not only stretching what you had as was usual for kunoichi, but actively trying to gain more.

The downside, of course, was that it required a lot of hard work. Something which Sakura most definitely did not desire to do. She'd seen – who was it? Maito Gai? – and his team training once. Both the sensei and his mini-me had been shouting something about youth, while the other two members of the team just grimaced and kept grimly walking on their hands. Sakura shuddered. _Even if we did end up with a horrible teacher who's absolutely no good for us, let me say selfishly that I'm very, very happy we didn't end up with someone like THAT. What he does might be healthy and build muscles, but there's no way in hell I'd survive with someone like that for a jounin-sensei. I'd rather be a missing-nin, thank you._

_...Although, I wonder, do you count as a nukenin if you haven't even passed the survival test from your jounin-sensei?_

Her mind was occupied by these entertaining thoughts as Naruto, then Sasuke arrived within her line of sight over the edges of her book. Which, she saw as she flipped it shut to tuck inside the pocket of her new shorts, was written by a... Tsunade? No last name? Huh. That was weird.

Oh well, no weirder than Maito Gai. Inwardly Sakura shuddered. The mere sight of that guy had probably scarred her for life. But, come to think of it, did the other girl (JuuJuu? TenTen? Something like that) on his team have a last name?

She had to pull herself out of these thoughts again as Kakashi-sensei announced in a loud and happy (almost certainly false) voice, "Ohayou, my students! It is a pleasure to be with you on this fine morning." Reflexively, they all glanced upwards to the cloud-coated sky. Right. "Sasuke, you continue practicing what I taught you last time. Naruto, Sakura, I have something new for you today."

Sasuke "Hn"d again, and brooded off to a nearby stand of trees. Sakura shrugged, and followed Kakashi (who was being trailed by Naruto) to the bank of a nearby stream. Kakashi gave one of his little eye-smiles and grabbed a creeping vine from one of the nearby trees. He handed it to Naruto.

"Here. Try and put enough chakra into this so it stays stiff and straight. If you manage to blow it up there are more on the other trees." Kakashi eye-smiled again. Sakura wondered how he did that.

"And you, Sakura...well, try the same thing with this." He handed her a much shorter stalk of tall grass. While Naruto kept trying to get his chakra output down to less than a thousand watts (or whatever the technical measurement for chakra was), Kakashi-sensei coached her on figuring out how to get enough chakra into the grass stalk. When Sakura was done, she felt tired enough to take a long nap (in the morning no less) and mentioned this to Kakashi. Politely, of course. Really. No glaring at all.

He smiled that damned eye-smile at her again. "That would be because you barely have enough chakra to walk on water. Lots of practice, even with something like this that requires mostly control of what chakra you have, is very tiring." He paused. "Therefor..."

Kakashi flung out his arm in a grand gesture. "Ten laps on the stream! On your hands! And don't forget, there are fish in here that like to eat nice tasty Human Nibbles™. So remember to add extra layers to keep from getting your hands wet!

"On next thought..." he mused as Sakura sighed and began the horribly Gai-like task, "Maybe I should have made her do this at the hot springs. She'd learn fast enough to not get burned then. Ah, too troublesome..."

Sakura wanted very badly to look up and inform Kakashi-sensei of his very strong resemblance to the lazy pineapple-head Shikamaru, but even the thought of doing that nearly destabilized her chakra flow, so she concentrated again on making her slow way up and down the stream. At the final end of the torturous ten laps, she hand-walked the few steps to the bank and gracefully fell over, head and shoulders dangling above the water while the rest of her lay exhaustedly on the grass. And weeds. And Kakashi's feet, she noticed. Ouch...for him. All the blood flow was still in her head and arms, so she didn't really feel it that much.

Besides, she had no doubt she was heavier than his shoes were uncomfortable.

After a few minutes, she rolled off Kakashi's feet and farther onto dry land. Ouch. Her arms _ached_. But, on the plus side, when she glanced at them Sakura saw that the palms of her hands were completely dry.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I know that Sakura is terribly OOC. I'm sorry. Part of why is probably the fact that fangirl!Sakura annoys me beyond belief. As for her not-really-there crush on Sasuke--I'm taking my cue there from the author of (I believe; it's been a while since I read it) 'Black Sheep'. This chapter is kinda short for me, but this seemed like the best place to break off.

Oh, and I'll be totally messing up the general theories of chakra, chakra manipulation, and the like. I never finished reading the Chuunin Exams arc, so everything mentioned after that I know only from fanfiction. My definition of Genjutsu is also horribly screwed up. Just thought I should mention that. But I completely adore this fandom, and Sakura is hugely fun to write, so I hope I'm not stomping on too many canon-sticklers' toes.

Now, how about a review so I can know you actually read this instead of clicking by mistake and immediently hitting the back button?


	2. Not a Date, Really

A/N: See, I _told_ you the last one was short. Actually, this one's pretty short too, but not quite that bad. Where I'm at, right now, the story's twenty thousand words long and growing fairly fast. My real problem is that I have things planned out that are _going_ to happen in the future, but more time needs to pass before they can actually happen. And there are several places that need rewriting badly. (sighs) I always seem to write better at the beginning than wherever I am now.

Warnings? The usual. Language, insinuation from Inner Sakura, possible abuse of the line break, and general OOCness. Hopefully the last isn't too bad.

* * *

After a nice nap and being dragged to a meal by the probably-grinning Kakashi-sensei and the annoyed-with-his-lack-of-progress Naruto, Sakura almost felt up to that Taijutsu session she'd made Kakashi promise. Almost.

She made her way slowly to the bridge again and sat down on one side. If she was really training-minded, Sakura would have sat on the water. But that would have been, to borrow Shikamaru's phrase (and who knew it could be so useful?), 'too troublesome'. Instead, Sakura felt around in her pocket for that book by Tsunade-the-mysterious-woman-with-no-surname. Thank the kami all clothes made for ninja had zippers on everything. Having a valuable (or even worse, borrowed) text fall out of your pocket during training or a fight and get ruined was just the thing to kill a nice day.

Although, the _places_ some of those zippers were occasionally situated... They sometimes made Sakura wonder if she'd managed to wander into the wrong shop.

**Although, some of those would be fun to try out with Sasuke, don't you think?**

_Shut up, Inner Sakura. _

But she continued anyway. **Or Kakashi, if you like older men...**

_No, Inner. Just no. Do not go there. At the very least, not for another few years. I'm THIRTEEN, dammit! _

**Sheesh, just trying to be helpful...**

_Uh-huh. Sure._ Well, whatever. Sakura went back to reading her book. This Tsunade person was very smart, and able to write things in a way that was much more understandable than most of the assigned Academy texts. Sakura wondered why they didn't give students stuff like this while they were still in school... It was probably because the Academy was intended to weed out the ones with no stamina, the ones who couldn't take all the pointless boredom which was most of what was taught there. Oh, sure, the ninja basics were taught as well, but the academics weren't of much use. Who really needed to know the full name and habits of the Nidaime's great-aunt?

No, only the children who wanted to become ninja badly enough to sit through all that were the ones who would succeed. Even Naruto, the number one hyperactive ball of energy and humour (usually), had shown up to even most of the meaningless classes because he had something he wanted from this. He'd wanted – and still did – to become Hokage, to have not just the power that position would grant him but what it really _meant_. The Hokage was the most respected not because he (or she) was the most powerful, but because they were willing to do everything they could to protect the village and help it. To protect and help even those who hated them, because _they loved Konohagakure and everyone in it_.

She and Ino, Sakura reflected, had been obsessed with Sasuke. But he was still only one of the reasons for their wanting to be shinobi—it wasn't like all his fangirls had tried to be ninja to get closer to him. In fact, if she'd been put on a different team (like Ino had), she would have hardly seen Sasuke, even between missions.

When Sakura had been younger, she'd wanted to be a beautiful Kunoichi who was also totally kickass. This would still be nice, but it required hard work. Not that she wouldn't work hard—but it was best to start slow. Kakashi-sensei was right, she was pretty damn weak. And the only way to get stronger – physically and with chakra – was to train. Which, she reminded herself, was why she'd bugged Kakashi into the taijutsu session he was late for.

He'd better not be more than a half-hour later than he already was, or it'd be too dark to train. Sometimes, Sakura thought, it would be nice to have streetlamps like non-hidden villages did.

It wasn't that Sakura didn't still like Sasuke—she did. Really. But in the past few months, since the rather disasterous Wave mission, she'd started noticing him more. Not just idolizing him, but noticing him. Yes, he was a moody, angsty, bastard revenger. However, most (if not all) of the things she'd previously idolized him for were still present. All that had happened was that she'd started noticing his bad points as well as his good, seeing him as a person.

Ah—and here came Kakashi-sensei, past the last house. Late as usual. Sakura wondered where Naruto was, seeing as she'd wrangled this particular training bout with him in mind. It wasn't that his taijutsu was really abysmal—just that nobody had bothered to teach him properly, so there were gaps (obvious even to her) in his defense and attacks that would not serve him well. Sakura quietly smirked to herself. 'Would not serve him well'? What an odd speech pattern she was getting into...

Kakashi-sensei waved as he came up to the bridge, nose still buried deep in an orange-covered book. He leaned against the bridge railing next to her spot. After flipping another page, he spoke. "Naruto's still working on his chakra control. That boy is a surprising perfectionist sometimes." Kakashi actually shook his head at this tragedy. "So today it's just you-and-me!"

Sakura glared at him over the top of her (well, his really...but it was hers for now!) book. Slowly, still holding it in front of her face she rose to lean next to him. He'd picked a spot awkwardly close to her, so she had to be careful not to bump into him while standing up and when she settled into her own reading spot, they were practically bumping elbows. Carefully not doing so, she tucked Tsunade's book back into the pocket it seemed to have claimed for itself and just leaned back on the railing.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said in an amiable voice. "Are we going to start training or what?"

"Aa, been waiting for you to ask that." Kakashi actually tucked away his Icha Icha book in preparation. If she hadn't been working so hard to be amiable and polite, Sakura would have stared. Then done a release seal or two and hit 'Kakashi' to make sure he was neither a cruel genjutsu nor a henged bunshin.

Kakashi-sensei was actually (awed stare) _helpful_ during the taijutsu session. It almost made Sakura ask if he was coming down with something. But he moved just as fast as ever, and seemed perfectly fine when it came to shouting annoying-yet-helpful pointers at her.

"Left arm needs to be a little higher!"

"Not that high, you look like a diver!"

"You need to buy some new shoes, these ones'll fall off if you're not careful!"

And so on. Kakashi-sensei could actually be a good teacher sometimes. Very annoying, but still good. She wondered if this was the side Sasuke saw every day, and whether Naruto would ever see it. Sakura hoped so—Naruto's bad grades in the Academy had to be because few people bothered to teach him. Silently, she vowed to make sure Kakashi-sensei kept right on being a good teacher.

**Shannaro!**

Yeah, whatever.

After Kakashi-sensei called break (possibly end; you never knew with him) Sakura lay around breathing hard and stretching to relax her muscles. She noticed Kakashi had dragged out his Icha Icha again, but didn't bother to call him on it. Finally, she remembered the mission they'd been given the day before.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei? About that mission briefing..."

Kakashi gave a contented grunt, then looked up from his orange-covered book. "Oh yeah, that...not much to it. We're supposed to escort a carriage of participants to the Annual Launderers' Convention in a town that's not far from here on the route to Rain. I'd classify this as a C-minus rank, myself."

Civilian town, Sakura surmised. Just as well. And...'Annual Launderers' Convention'? Oh well, there _were_ ninja mailmen after all. After learning that the month before, she felt nothing could surprise her. Of course, she would no doubt be proven wrong later.

**You betcha! Of course, the biggest one will probably be your marriage to...**

_Would you SHUT UP about that?!_

**Nope.** Nonetheless, Inner Sakura settled down into her usual sleep.

Sakura sighed softly. It seemed Inner Sakura had found a new target. Rather than aiming all of her (and their) attraction and what few fantasies Sakura allowed herself at Sasuke, they were now aimed at Sasuke, yes, but also...Kakashi. And Sakura found it more than a little disturbing that her inner personality was fangirling her much-older (what had she heard? He was, what, fourteen years older than her? That was more than twice her age!) jounin-sensei.

Kakashi himself just watched Sakura's face and body language. No eye-smile, nothing. At least, nothing that could be distinguished under his mask. Eventually, Sakura pulled herself out of her musings about her other self's preferences, and rejoined the world around her. The one where Kakashi-sensei was staring at her face.

Breaking the now-slightly-awkward silence, Sakura asked "Where and when are we going to meet our client?"

Kakashi replied absently. "West gate at dawn."

**Yo. Don't forget. This is _Kakashi-sensei_ here.**

_Oh, that's right._ "Your dawn or our dawn?" Sakura asked lazily.

Kakashi blinked, then nodded. "Was hoping you'd notice that, my wonderful student!" Sakura nearly shuddered. That last phrase was way too Maito-Gai-like for her, even if Kakashi-sensei was being sarcastic. "From now on, all mentions of time from me to just you are in my personal time scale."

Which, Sakura calculated, was roughly two to three hours behind the time scale of everyone else. Privately, she resolved to make Kakashi break that habit someday. He might be late enough to get them all killed. It wasn't likely, seeing as he'd thus far been on time when it mattered, but just once was all it would take...

Sakura sighed again. She'd become somewhat morbid lately, she noticed. Since the Wave mission, maybe. The first time she'd ever seen someone die—the first time she'd ever feared for her own life. Kakashi-sensei had mentioned a few weeks after they'd come back that he'd been asked to enter them in the Chuunin exams (it was convenient, they'd been on a C-rank turned A-rank and handled themselves well, etcetera) but had refused. He'd even apologized for deciding for them, not giving them the freedom to say yea or nay.

Sakura thought now that maybe he'd been right to choose for them. Naruto and Sasuke would almost certainly have said yes, and she would have gone with them so as not to drag everyone else (specifically Sasuke, but also Naruto) down. And then maybe they'd have gotten themselves killed. What had Kakashi-sensei taught her and Naruto then? Nothing. How to walk up trees. No tricks or tips on dealing with opponent's jutsu, no taijutsu, nothing really. He'd left them to sink or swim. They'd floundered their way to the bank, but they'd already started wading back in the shallows and eventually would have to dive right in.

Between her and Naruto, he'd coped the best. He'd shown himself good at thinking up battle strategies on the fly—which was the only way to do it, really. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, so the way to get around that was making sure it never had to come _out_ of contact.

**That's so illogical it's logical,** remarked Inner Sakura.

_Isn't it though?_

That, his Kage Bunshin kinjutsu – and the Sakura-jury was still out on where he'd gotten _that_ one – and the basic Academy-level training had been enough to let them pretty much win that mission. Pretty much, because Zabuza and Haku had died. Vaguely, she wondered what would have happened if they'd lived...

* * *

"_Tadaima!" called Haku, gently closing the front door against the cool autumn winds. Sakura hurried into the front room of her family's house._

"_So how did your first day as Iruka's student teacher go?"_

_Haku grimaced. "Those little kids are monsters. Half of them called me a girl, and three quarters of **them** continued calling me one even after I'd announced my real gender three times. I had numerous strands of hair yanked out, more bruises than I've ever gained in a few hours before, three scratches from brats who thought it would be fun to toss shuriken at me – even if they couldn't aim worth an Uchiha's taijutsu – and spent more time running around after the little beasts than I've ever had to be on my feet before at once. Other than that, it went pretty well."_

_Sakura chuckled. "Remind me never to take up babysitting, no matter how low the Genin pay is. Come on in to the kitchen, dinner's nearly ready."_

_Haku shucked off his coat, draping it over a nearby chair. "Where're your parents?"_

_She shrugged. "Out, not sure where. They said they'd be back by morning, so I'm not really worried. Oh, and Naruto promised to teach me how to make pocky later!"_

* * *

The image of what could have, what would have been, dissolved like snow in summer sunlight, and Sakura was aware she had tears in her eyes. Glancing quickly over at Kakashi, she saw his nose was once again buried in his orange-covered book. Angrily and quickly, she dashed the salt water from her eyes. _You signed up years ago to be hired-out mercenary, Cherry Blossom Girl. Get used to it already._

Fiercely, she pulled out and began again to read Tsunade-the-Brilliant's book on chakra. Kakashi said nothing, didn't look up from his Icha Icha, but somehow that made her more sure he'd noticed her mood. It made her more angry. Mentally tossing in a hole, burning, dumping acid on the ashes, and burying that anger, she dove into Tsunade's marvelous writing.

For a time, it made her forget everything else.

* * *

Some indefinite time later, she heard Kakashi-sensei shift. Then the sharp_snap_ of a book closing. Sakura kept reading, appearing (hopefully) to take no notice. Kakashi leaned over her shoulder.

"You know, the author of that book is reputed to have some sort of super strength technique."

Sakura nodded and kept reading.

"They say she can punch holes in the ground." Kakashi waited a beat or two, then sighed. "Okay, I give up on conversation. Wanna go get dinner, though?"

Sakura gave an 'Un' that could be translated from her personal version of Uchiha-ese into something like "Sure. Why not?".

"Yaay!" Kakashi made a little cheering motion over his head with both fists. "I know this nice Indian place..."

She again gave an 'Un', though it came out more like "Naruto, un?" Kakashi-sensei jumped a little, then settled back down. Interesting. Did he know someone who tacked 'un' onto the end of their sentences?

"He's at Ichiraku's, as usual. With Iruka-sensei, I think. You coming?"

Sakura finally closed her book. "Give me a few minutes to go get showered and changed first. My parents are out, so I've no hope of food from that quarter anyway."

Kakashi gave his little eye-smile. "I'll be at your house in about half an hour."

She rolled her eyes. "Your time scale or mine?"

He kept on eye-smiling, and somehow managed not to trip over the tree root in his path. "You'll see."

Great. Just great.

* * *

Surprisingly, her lazy, chronically late teacher _was_ there after she'd washed and gotten changed into a light skirt and blouse. Genin pay might not be good but her parents still thought of her as their little girl sometimes. And sometimes, that was useful.

**Of course, you don't feel _bad_ about using them like that...**

_It's not using them. They can do what they want, and if my mother wants to give me cash to buy clothes with then that's fine._

**Especially when you're wearing them on a date with y–**

_Dear GOD, shut up about that already!_

**Just for now.**

Finally, she was dormant again. Inner Sakura had become, oddly enough, much MORE troublesome after Sakura's own revelations about Sasuke. Sighing, she left the house, closing and locking the door behind her. Not that it would keep anyone other than law-abiding civilians (who were too honest for that sort of thing anyway) and the most talentless of criminals. Still, it was reflexive.

_Now if I could only make my taijutsu that easy..._

Kakashi-sensei eye-smiled at her. "Let's go!"

Since when was her sensei so...perky?

The Indian resteraunt felt cozy. It wasn't, not really, but it _felt_ as though it was, which was what counted. The drapery helped. And all the staff were wearing traditional Indian clothes, making Sakura rather envious. They all looked so beautiful, especially the waitresses in their sari.

When their server, whose name was Asha, brought the handwritten menus, Kakashi stole hers and scanned them both. "Dal Makhni, Jeera rice, and the vegetarian bhaj for you, I think."

"Hey!" Sakura was not used to other people ordering for her. Then again, as a ninja (read: hired mercenary) she'd have to get used to dealing with other people doing what they wanted for her sometime...

"Go ahead, tell me honestly you know what you'd like here."

Sakura just glared at him, then pulled out Tsunade's book. He followed suit with his Icha Icha. Dinner passed in silence for both of them. But, Sakura had to admit, the food he'd gotten for her was _very_ good.

* * *

In the morning at what was roughly dawn, Sakura checked to make sure she had everything she might need for the few days they'd be spending out of town. Basic ninja first aid kit, check. Bingo book (just in case this somehow went like their last C-rank mission), check. Two changes of practical yet relatively nice-looking clothes, check. Canteen of water and a small package of dry food, check. Hairbrush, check. Extra book, check. And if she finished _that_ one before they got back, Sakura privately resolved to steal Kakashi-sensei's Icha Icha book. Boredom is a horrible thing.

Her parents were still sleeping. She left a note on the kitchen table alerting them of the C-rank, where, and how long she would be gone. Thieving (she loved that word) some bread and fruit, she set out for the west gate to wait for Kakashi-sensei.

Their clients were there, looking aggrevated. Most of them were big strong women used to washing things by hand (and rough soap, and large stick, and...) for a living, but there were a few men there too. One of the taller women waved her over. "Where're the ninja we hired as guards?"

Sakura shrugged. "Well, Kakashi-sensei always arrives a few hours late, so you have at least one left. I'm not sure where Sasuke and Naruto are, but they should be here before Kakashi-sensei." She laughed. "I always have to ask him if it's 'Dawn: your time' or 'Dawn: our time'. I don't think he's ever been late in a life-threatening situation, though."

Or when picking her up for that dinner. Absently, she wondered where Inner Sakura was—usually it would have been her saying that last sentence. Oh well. She found a cozy spot atop one of the three carriages and settled down to finish Tsunade's book.

About half an hour later by the sun, Naruto and Sasuke came into view, bickering as usual. _Were I and Ino like that before the Wave mission? I haven't seen her much since then, but I think we might be better friends now than we were._

**Makes you wonder when they'll grow up friend-wise and stop arguing over every little thing. Don't you just want to POKE them sometimes? Make them agree for once?**

_Damn straight. Where were you, anyway?_

**You ever met the Kyuubi no Kitsune? His human form is... **Inner Sakura wolf whistled.

_EW! I **so **did not need to know that!_

**Says you.**

Inner Sakura, it seemed, was back and annoying as usual. Sakura herself lifted one hand from her book and lazily waved at the bickering boys. "Yo," she called.

Naruto did a double take. "Wait a sec—Sakura?! I almost thought Kakashi had arrived on time for once, you sounded just like him."

Sakura smirked. "Good to know my acting skills actually work. Nah, Kakashi-sensei'll be here in half an hour or so. Settle in somewhere and try not to argue, there's a good boy." She grinned. It was fun acting like Kakashi-sensei. Surprisingly, Naruto and Sasuke only glared at each other one more time before finding places to sit, Naruto in a tree and Sasuke against one of the carriage-wheels. Only a chapter or so later, Kakashi himself came strolling around a bend in the road.

"Yo, my students!" Sakura noticed that Naruto had been right, she _had_ sounded like Kakashi-sensei even though she'd only been meaning to mock him. Suddenly, a suspicion rose up from the depths of her mind like an oarfish (scary things) from the depths of the sea, trailing weeds and dead eels. Maybe—maybe jounin-sensei had the effect of making one of their students almost exactly like them. After all, Maito Gai had a mini-me in Rock Lee, and Hinata might turn out to be the next Kurenai if she got over her shyness.

_Really, though,_ the sensible part of her brain pointed out. _You'd have thought Kakashi-sensei would have picked Sasuke for this. After all, isn't he the student Kakashi-sensei dotes on?_

**Maybe,** Inner Sakura suggested, **they don't **_**choose**_** who their mini-me is. Maybe it just happens.**

Sakura herself mumbled out loud "But I don't think I'll ever like Icha Icha..."

Kakashi looked at her weirdly. At least, she thought he did. As usual, his expression was invisible through the cloth of his mask. After collecting all their clients from where they'd wandered off in boredom, they set off for the unnamed town on the road to Rain.

* * *

A/N: Sakura is hugely fun for me to write. Also, I've started writing (not posting yet) the first of a series that's my stab at doing totally unrealistic and unpopular Sakura pairings in a way that's _believable_. Thus far the first is proving to be truly epic-length. Pairing: SakuraxYondaime! Will contain Kushina!Sakura and time travel.

I'm totally obsessed with writing Sakura fics. I really should be working on my original stuff, but this is more fun right now...

As for romance for this story: None planned, so far. Lots of weird stuff, including Inner Sakura's teasing about just about every good-looking male Sakura meets, but this is my stab at a Sakura-centric genfic. (Plus, I keep being a fan of a different Sakura pairing every hour or so. This way I can stick in romantic-ish moments without any actual pairings.)

My apologies for the extremely long author's note. Standard stuff: If you've read this far, click the periwinkle button down there and type in a few words. Like, for example, "Smorgasbord!" See, that wasn't so hard.

Any advice at all on what works and what doesn't would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

Lilz


	3. Uchiha Library Arc Beginning: Theories

A/N: This story came about because, after rereading MockV's 'A Twist of Chance' for the hundredth time, I realized that although I'm horrible with fight scenes, that didn't mean I couldn't write a fic based in a world where all the characters regularly fight. A fic about fighters doesn't have to focus, or even necessarily show their fights. So this chapter is dedicated to her, and the flamers.

Yes, the flamers. Because I've seen one or two really _good_ flames, and I always want to thank the flamers for offering their constructive criticism.

Warnings: A Sasuke who swears. Once. A word or two of bad fangirl-Japanese. The creatures living in the Uchiha compound. An Orochimaru cameo. That's about it, I think.

* * *

When they finally did get to the little town (Sakura _still_ didn't know what it was called, and didn't bother to ask) it was long after dark. Kakashi-sensei graciously threatened the receptionist of the closest hotel until she finally gave them a room. _A_ room. It seemed the few hostels in town were almost all taken up by the Annual Launderers' Convention they'd been hired to help.

Sakura talked quietly and reasonably with Kakashi-sensei, and then, when that failed, shouted reasonably at him. At last she managed to wrangle not sleeping on the floor. The boys? Sorry Sasuke, Naruto. They'd have to fend for themselves if they wanted the other bed. And with Kakashi, it was more likely he'd make them sleep on the floor. Or maybe, if he was as tired as he'd seemed to her, the ceiling. She could just about hear him now, "It'd be an excellent exercise in chakra control for you, Naruto. And Sasuke, you could do with some work in that area yourself..."

Heh.

Sakura's last waking thought was that normal C-ranks were a lot more boring than she'd thought. Or maybe Kakashi-sensei's opinion of this being a 'D+' were accurate.

In the morning she woke up again with the phrase '_Look inside...'_ echoing in her mind, and the edge of an image. Something blue-white, like ice... How did she know what ice looked like? She knew it was frozen water from what she'd read, but Fire Country got snow perhaps once in five years. Ice, even less. She'd seen icicles before, but they'd all been clear. So how did she know that ice could be...that colour?

Shaking her head to clear it of both the annoying puzzles and the loud bird chirps from the window, Sakura sat up. Huh. It looked like Kakashi had been nice to his team for once, and let them have the other bed. She wondered if that was really him over on the other side of hers, verging on falling off, or a bunshin designed to deceive attackers. Kakashi-sensei was human, of course, and therefore needed sleep...still, Sakura had only seen him tired at all (as opposed to passed out from chakra exhaustion) once or twice, and he reminded her of the Energizer bunny. Her sensei just kept going, and going, and going... All the while with his little eye-smile and orange-covered book.

Well, whatever. Sakura hauled her lazy ass out of bed for a shower and breakfast. The other members of Team Seven would have to fend for themselves; she was starving! And not for dried food and stale canteen water, either. A smoothie and cinnamon rolls for her.

**Mine mine mine, allll mine...** sang Inner Sakura cheerfully.

After procuring and devouring the appropriate substances from the downstairs kitchen, Sakura decided it was high time for some shopping. Ninja or not, no girl could wear entirely practical clothes for long without buying something fun to wear. And besides, who could resist the temptation to tourist shop?

Apparently, she could. There wasn't really anything worth buying here she couldn't get at home, and for cheaper at that. Deprived of her fun, Sakura found a nice, sunny rooftop to lay on in her underwear (appropriately bikini-looking, even if they made her look fat. She wasn't, really! Just lacking in muscle tone) and sulk. She was going to get Kakashi-sensei to lend her a book on genjutsu as soon as possible. It took way more chakra than anything else (something which she was severely lacking), but both Iruka-sensei from the academy and Kakashi-sensei himself had said she'd make a good genjutsu specialist with work. Or maybe a medic-nin... Sakura was kind of squeamish, but her first instinct when seeing someone hurt was to help, rather than standing there ouching in sympathy pain like Ino, and (come to that) a lot of the other females she knew.

Maybe she could get some tutoring from Kabuto. He was training to be a medic-nin—however, Sakura recalled hearing that he'd been granted a request for extended leave from the village by the Sandaime, and wouldn't be back for a while. Oh well. Maybe she could annoy Kakashi-sensei into telling her when he came back.

Until then, she'd have to make do with books and whatever knowledge could be gleaned from the busy experts of chakra control. Of course, that would mean building up her supply of chakra first... As Kakashi had said, it was abysmally low. Really, though, was it her fault she had so little chakra?

According to Miss Genius Tsunade and Kakashi-sensei, yes. Chakra was like a muscle, you had to work building it up, and keep working. Sakura sighed. She'd never been much good at that sort of work.

She pulled out the book she'd brought from home and suntanned for a while, even undoing the clasp on the back of her bra/bikini top while lying on her front to avoid tan lines. Absently, she wondered if Henge could be penetrated by the sun. Well, why not check? It wasn't as if it would hurt. Employing her small store of chakra, she carefully Henged into herself, with bikini properly tied on. Hm, maybe the only place it actually existed was at the single point of illusion, which would explain why she'd been able to keep it up for the past fifteen minutes without feeling any real chakra drain. That would explain why shinobi didn't use henge much, because when they changed they changed all of themselves.

Maybe a good disguise would be just changing little things, like the shape of your nose and your hair, maybe your eyes as well. A little bit would last a long way, as Sakura knew from experience with makeup. Just a few basic structural differences, and you wouldn't be stopped on the street.

Was Henge really an illusion at all? Every academy student was taught that yes, it was merely a seeming dropped over one's own features for a short amount of time, of no real use other than as a test to see if you could pass your classes. To all students, it felt like an enormous chakra drain, and no one had been required (at least, as far as Sakura knew) to hold it for more than ten seconds. Perhaps it was more than it seemed. Maybe it was solid, requiring a large amount of chakra to create a shell around a human form.

Or maybe it wasn't a shell. Maybe it actually changed things, made them real for a time. If she remembered, Naruto's spin-off 'Oiroke no Jutsu' had been touched (and nosebled on) several times, and hadn't wavered. Of course, it hadn't been very detailed, but it had still stayed until he released it a minute or so later... If it really was solid, then it would certainly require both a large amount of chakra and excellent control of that chakra to stay up and stay realistic-looking for long.

Henge really hadn't been investigated enough, Sakura decided. Or if it had, she hadn't heard about it.

The Ninja Academy tested its students on the three basic forms for graduation: ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu. Taijutsu was basically dealing with things fast and physically, no fancy chakra-wasting, just muscle and know-how. Ninjutsu was doing weird things with chakra. Genjutsu was making people _think_ you were doing weird kickass things with chakra, or just making them think whatever you wanted them to think.

The four things used to test these skills were; a basic taijutsu spar with one of the teachers; Kawarimi; Bunshin no Jutsu; and Henge. But who knew which was which? Certainly not most of the students, who didn't care. The teachers, perhaps. If Sakura was right, though, _neither_ of the last two counted as genjutsu. Bunshin was the first (if insubstantial) stop on the road that led to Mizu Bunshin, Kage Bunshin, Bunshin Daibakuha, and many others, all of which were considered ninjutsu. And Henge...well, genjutsu was defined as messing with people's heads with chakra. Since that was exactly what you were doing, you had to 'mess with the head' of one person, or a specific group of people. And you had to concentrate on, or at least know, what you were doing. Henge wasn't like that. Henge was making _yourself_ look (or possibly be) something else.

Amazing. Truly amazing.

Sakura bet there were a lot of jutsu used for one or two specific purposes and then forgotten about otherwise. Kage Bunshin, perhaps. It was, from what she knew, a kinjutsu and therefore mostly unused. When it was used, typically only one or two were made to fling things at your opponent before getting hit by something and disappeared. But perhaps there was more to it than that...

Family-specific jutsu and bloodlines had no doubt been investigated deeply by those who used them. But the basic stuff—now there was something different to be looked into.

Perhaps Sakura wouldn't be a medic-nin, or a genjutsu specialist after all. Maybe she'd spend her life looking deeper at things. Look inside...

Look inside...

Look inside _and see what is really there_. See what you can do with it.

These were the thoughts echoing inside Sakura's head when her jounin-sensei appeared from nowhere and grabbed her before jumping down off the roof and hiding them both inside a nearby building. Absently, she noticed that the top half of her bikini was _not_ laying on the rooftop. Either Henge was _very_ complete, enough to disappear the things it replaced, or it really did change reality. Either way, her bikini top hadn't disappeared from her chest when Kakashi-sensei grabbed her off the roof. Thank every god in existence for that—she'd probably run away and become a missing-nin if her jounin-sensei saw her topless.

Well, _after_ slapping him and stealing his Icha Icha collection in punishment.

Instead of doing any of this, Sakura communicated to her teacher by means of menacing growls and lowered eyebrows that the hand over her mouth was most unwelcome. After finally getting him to remove it, she asked Kakashi in a low whisper, "What the hell was that for?"

He shushed her, but spoke just as loudly himself. "Orochimaru and his henchmen have begun searching the town. I'd rather not get found, thank you."

Sakura had no clue who Orochimaru was, and made a mental note to find out. Instead, she asked, "What's he searching for?"

Kakashi-sensei made the face of a storyteller speaking a part of great import and suspense. "The Saikoujingan."

Sakura blinked. 'The Superman Eye'? What a weird name... "Okay, so what does it _do_?"

"It allows the user to shoot lasers out of their eyes."

**And no, this isn't just a weird dream like the time when Sasuke-kun declared his love for your goldfish. Sorry, Outer.**

"...

"...and he wants it _why_?"

"Apparently he needs a new 'body'. I don't think either of us want to know what that means, right?" Kakashi quirked an eyebrow. At least, he did from what Sakura could see of it. She nodded. Definitely no need to find out what that meant. Instead of trying, she fell asleep. Apparently staying in the sun too long made you sleepy, for some reason.

_I wonder how long it will take Kakashi-sensei to get a cramp from having me sleeping half on him like this. Or how long until he finds somewhere to dump me._

* * *

_EW!_ Sakura shouted in her head. _Ewewewewew!_ Outwardly, she calmly and quietly backed away from the compound and walked casually down the street. Inwardly...

_Those two are WAY too young to be doing something like that._

**Oh yeah, and we've had that crush on Sasuke for HOW long, Outer?**

_...that's not relevant. The point is, they're thirteen! They should be...they should be, um..._

**Going off on C-rank-turned-A-rank missions and getting trained by Kakashi after you've yelled at him enough to make him move his lazy copy-nin ass?**

_Okay, you have a point. Still..._

**You have to admit, that was really hot. Really though, instead of arguing about how old is old enough to get serious like that, shouldn't you be crying your eyes out with heartbreak?**

_Erm..._

**You ARE heartbroken at least a little, right?**

_Yeah. It hurts. Quite a bit, actually. But...they could have just fallen down, right?_

**In THAT position? Maybe...but it'd take a lot of unlikely coincidences. A lot. You have to agree, though, however much the idea that Sasuke's in a relationship with someone else hurts, that was hot.**

_It was not!_

**Was so.**

_Okay...maybe. Maybe maybe. And if we're talking heartbreak, shouldn't you be hurt a lot more than me? You fangirled a lot more than I did._

**Nope. Not at all. I did tell you how hot the Kyuubi's human form is, right?**

This time, Sakura really did burst out loud her "EW!". And ran down the street laughing.

* * *

The next day, Sakura's parents dragged her to a play by the Konoha Guild of Actors. They were good, very good. Her mind wandered, though—she just wasn't a play kind of person. Yes, she liked reading. Yes, she liked reading old books. No, she did not enjoy hearing a lot of people 'thee' and 'thou' each other while dancing, pretending to fight, and pretending to argue.

One scene caught her eye, though. One of the actors – actresses? – in the wings, visible from where she was sitting, made a hand seal or two just before rushing out to participate in whichever fake quarrel was going on. Sakura frowned. She was sure that person had had black hair before. _Methinks there is more to this than there seems..._

**Outer, you've been influenced by that play. Did you hear yourself? Really, 'methinks'?**

Sakura stared off into space in horror for a few moments. The Shakespeare was corrupting her! Blinking, she noticed that the play had made her late for her team meeting, even by Kakashi-sensei's time zone. Uh-oh...they weren't going to let her forget this. Later than Kakashi!

Dropping all thoughts of her Henge research, Sakura yelled a quick farewell to her parents and sprinted for the bridge.

"Maa, boys, looks like our kunoichi is LATE today..."

Sakura glared at him. "For your information, my parents dragged me to a _play_ today. Which I had to sit through. For. Three. Hours. And I HATE plays!"

Kakashi eye-smiled at her. She glared back. "Look, _sensei_. Since you never bother to teach us anything anyway, why should I even _bother_ coming? I have to shout at you until my throat is raw before you consent to working on _one_ little thing with me and Naruto."

"Aa." He dropped the smile.

Sakura sighed. "Look, I didn't get much sleep last night. And besides... Kakashi-sensei?"

"Aa?"

"You really are a _horrible_ teacher."

"Aa."

"Are you listening?"

"Aa—yes. Yes yes."

"Good."

Sasuke looked puzzled, for once in his life. He probably hadn't noticed – or hadn't cared – that Kakashi-'sensei' had focused his training only on _him_. Naruto, on the other hand, was practically cheering. Sakura shook her head. "I'll stop yelling at you – well, mostly – if you'll do three things for me and Naruto.

"Firstly, a taijutsu training regimen for each of us. Naruto's form is abysmal and mine's not much better, plus I'm lacking in his monsterous strength and stamina." Glancing at Naruto, Sakura noticed a quick wince that was gone as soon as it appeared. "Secondly, daily chakra control exercises for Naruto. Thirdly, chakra _growth_ exercises for me. Deal, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Aa."

She glared at him. "That had better be a 'yes'."

"Hai. And I have something for you as well...a D-rank!" Seeing their (even Sasuke) glare, Kakashi hastily added, "But it's a fun one, I promise!"

"Hn." In Uchiha-speak, that meant 'This had better be good.'

"I swear, it is! You're going to catagorize the Uchiha library."

Naruto and Sakura looked at Sasuke. Sasuke looked at Kakashi, who shrugged. "Seems the Council's paying for it. Beats me why they waited this long, but all they want you to do is catalogue and organize the scrolls and books."

Sakura beckoned Naruto and Sasuke over, and they huddled in conference. After a few minutes of whispering Sakura backed out, nodding.

"Kakashi-sensei, are you doing anything today?"

His one visible eye widened slightly. "Oh no. No no no no no. You are _not_ involving me in this."

Sakura smiled beatifically. "But sensei, you said it would be fun."

Kakashi coughed. "IjustrememberedtheHokagesaidJiraiyawouldbebackintowntodaygottagobye!" He disappeared in a puff of smoke. Sakura glanced at her teamates. "Who the hell is Jiraiya?"

Naruto shook his head. "You don't want to know. Really, you don't."

This, of course, made her more curious. "Why? Give me one good reason, and I'll drop it."

Sasuke 'Hn'ed in concurr-ment.

Naruto sighed. "I take it you've never heard the name of the author of the Icha Icha series..."

There was silence.

Sakura broke it. "Right, that's it. Where's your library, Sasuke?"

* * *

The Uchiha compound was dusty. Sakura had failed to notice this before, because she'd never actually gone _in_. However, it was most certainly noticable now as she and Naruto sneezed and coughed their way through the house. Sasuke himself appeared unperturbed by the unhealthy amount of dust particles in his ancestral home. Perhaps he'd had to get used to it. Although, if it was her, she'd just have rented an apartment if she didn't want to bother with a cleaning lady.

After almost half an hour of slow going, sneezing, coughing, and hacking, they reached the library. It was a huge room, the size of most family's houses. It was also covered in one big mound of scrolls, books, boxes of what were presumably more books, and dust. It was like one huge, literary, messy, closet. Sakura and Naruto immediently settled into a new bought of sneezing and hacking, which caused more dust to rise and created a vicious cycle. Sasuke just stood there until they were able to overcome it.

"Right – that's –_it_. Naruto, back up a room or two and make lots of Kage Bunshin. We are going to _clean_ this place from sub-basement to tower, and it is going to _sparkle_. I doubt we'll be able to get any work done if all our time is spent sneezing and coughing up our lungs." She closed with a mutter of "Damn Kakashi-sensei, this is going to take a week at _least_. We'd better get paid big for this."

Naruto's Kage Bunshin were a huge help. Every two or so took charge of a room, and the others went out in a continuous bucket line of cleaning supplies and full garbage bags. Sakura later asked Naruto where they'd taken the garbage, and he looked at her confusedly for a moment before answering "One of the empty Hyuuga storerooms."

If the Hyuuga clan leaders were anything like Neji, the kid who'd nearly killed his own cousin over 'fate', they deserved it.

* * *

Sakura had helped with the cleaning all day, and had made Sasuke help by threatening him a little, so she was exhausted beyond the point of dreams. Yet she still woke up to a glimpse of ice and the whispered words "Look inside..."

It was beginning to be really effing annoying.

She found Kakashi-sensei by the memorial stone again, staring bleakly at the one name that held his attention. Hmm. Possibilities: Taizen Daisuke, Soresen Hitomi, Suzaku Rin, and Uchiha Obito. Uchiha, hm? Sakura couldn't picture Kakashi-sensei being friends with an Uchiha. Tolerant, yes. Friends, no. Suzaku Rin was more likely—hadn't she heard of a famous medic by that name?

Giving up on that for the moment, she broke the silence to ask when Kabuto would be back. Her only answer was a blank stare for a moment, then Kakashi blinked. "Kabuto? Why would you want to know about him?"

It was a pretty good question. Sakura just shrugged. "Before he left, he promised to teach me a bit of medicinal jutsu. I realized yesterday I'd never cashed in on his offer, and it would be really useful to know how to not cough when you've a lung full of dust."

"Aa. I take it the Uchiha library is worse than we thought?"

Sakura shuddered. "Try Uchiha _compound_. And the only place worse than that in all Konoha is probably the Lost Paperwork Mountains in the Hokage Tower. You owe us for cleaning supplies. Lots."

**And the Hyuuga owe us the use of their unused rooms. Purely in the interest of containing the dust, of course.**

_Naturally._

_But the spiders go to the Aburame. ALL the spiders._

Kakashi shrugged. "His leave is schedualed to end in a few days. A bit late for any help with your Uchiha compound problem."

Sakura sighed. "Sensei, have you ever _seen_ the Uchiha compound?"

Kakashi shook his head.

"Well, let's just say this should probably be an S-rank."

**And Hokage-sama had better make sure we get paid BIG!**

His eye widened. "You're kidding."

Sakura smiled gently. "Afraid not, Kakashi-sensei. I believe the dust (without the used cleaning supplies) alone has filled an entire spare room so far."

**Spare _Hyuuga_ room.**

"Yeah, we'll probably be done in a month or so." Sakura shrugged. At least she wouldn't have to see anyone die on this mission. Get injured—okay, that might happen. She'd seen Naruto and several clones forcing a horde of dust bunnies inside a metal trunk and then duct-taping it shut.

**Those should be sent to the Nara family, I think.**

Kakashi shrugged. "Alright. I'll see what I can get out of Hokage-sama for you."

Sakura grinned evilly. "I'm very glad to hear that. Because you're going to be _helping_ us."

* * *

Well, all they really made him do was burn the non-sentient dust. Not the stuff in the Hyuuga compound—the _other_ dust. The dust that came from the basement and sub-basement. There was a lot more of it than there'd been on the first floor, and Sakura didn't even want to guess what was in some of those boxes. Oh well—she was sure they'd be making Kakashi-sensei help with that as well. They couldn't exactly _make_ him, but they could announce publicly to the council that he'd abandoned them to the dust bunnies and three-foot spiders in the basements and attics.

Kakashi brought good news, though. The Hokage had temporarally upped their status to Chuunin and assigned them the B-plus-ranked mission of scrubbing the Uchiha compound till it _gleamed_. Since this was pretty much what they were doing anyway, the only thing that changed was the pay rate.

Sakura noticed that Kakashi-sensei was watching the movements of Naruto's Kage Bunshin with interest, and with his Sharingan in full view. After a few minutes Sakura told him to stick the hitai-ate back on before he fainted from chakra exhaustion. (Naturally, he objected to her use of the term 'fainted', but complied when Sakura pointed out that they hadn't cleaned the floor he was standing on yet.)

Their lunch break took place in what appeared to be the servants' kitchen, one of the closest rooms to the library and therefore one of the first Naruto and his Kage Bunshin had cleaned out. This meant, of course, that the only food in there now was the extra cup ramen he'd brought, but it was still a relief for all of them to be in somewhere clean enough to eat without glimpsing either huge spiders, rabid dust bunnies, or the sentient mold that had previously resided in the fridge. (Naruto and Sakura, when they'd found it, had taken pity and sent a few of Naruto's Kage Bunshin to escort it to the Hyuuga compound. Sakura had the feeling that the Hyuuga would not look kindly upon them for this and other such acts, but they were all **total bastards anyway.** according to Inner Sakura.)

Sakura herself thought Hinata was all right, and Neji was slowly growing to be less of a total asshole. (According to Ino, the only person she knew who actually saw him often.) But bye and large, she hadn't heard _anything_ kind about the said clan.

"THEY'RE LOOSE!"

Uh-oh. That was Naruto, or a clone. And 'They're loose' meant...

Sakura started running, grabbing Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke on the way.

As she'd feared, one of the dust bunnies had escaped. It was now attempting to chew its way through the barricade of cardboard boxes Naruto's clones had built.

"Shit." That was Sasuke, surprisingly. She'd expected some expression of astonishment, shock, and perhaps horror at the dust bunny's escape, but certainly not a swear word from Mr. Proper Uchiha. He saw her stare, and explained. "At least one of those boxes contains part of a store my ancestors made of chakra-enhanced, very pressure-sensitive Greek Fire."

Sakura nodded dumbly. Greek Fire was very old, and very rarely used. It would burn on water, and if made with the right kind of chakra tweaking, would burn the water as well. Once upon a time, the first kind was used in naval battles. Nowadays, it was mostly ignored in favor of explosive notes and other jutsu. But it was still a very dangerous weapon, and certainly not something you wanted a rabid dust bunny to bite into.

"Naruto..." But he was already moving, making more Kage Bunshin in an effort to herd the rabbit back in the box it'd been stuffed in when the trunk got full. When he finally squished it back in, Sasuke walked slowly over to the box the dust bunny had been trying to chew through. Slowly, he crouched down.

Sakura saw him visibly gulp and start to shake slightly before getting himself under control. When she followed and looked at him questioningly, the last Uchiha slowly nodded. Sakura knelt down next to him on the newly-clean basement floor, and peered into the box.

Through the ragged edges of the large hole gnawed by the rabid dust bunny, glass jars of oil gleamed. On the one label Sakura could see, among several characters she didn't recognize at once, darkly shone the kanji for 'fire'.

She started to shake.

Greek Fire had never been much used in the shinobi world, overshadowed by flashy techniques and Katon jutsu. But she remembered reading a translated foreign history about weapons of war. Greek Fire had shared a chapter with other fire-related 'civilian' (non-ninja) devices, and was said to have played a large part in the survival of a huge city. The records showed it was devestating, some even pegging it to begin burning on contact with air. The version Sasuke was talking about had been designed to burn explosively under a certain amount of pressure or contact with any fire. Of course, lying in a damp basement for years might have morphed the chemical compound into something even more dangerous.

Greek Fire, weapon of the sailor-soldiers. Destroyer of ships. Destroyer of land buildings, opposing troops, and whatever it could burn. Death in liquid form, once upon a time.

It wasn't all that dangerous, compared to some of the things out there now. But still, dangerous enough. Sakura pushed herself to her feet, grabbing packing tape out of her pocket. Naruto and his clones were already duct-taping the box like crazy, and she wedged herself in there to help. After adding several meters of tape to the by-now-at-least-three-inches-thicker box, she struggled out of the pack of Narutos and walked calmly back to the box of Greek fire. Only after all her tape was gone and the jars could no longer be seen through the 'clear' tape did she stop.

Both she and Sasuke went with the large detachment of Kage Bunshin that delivered the dust bunnies to the Nara family. Sakura personally wrote a note on the trunk to the effect of 'These are all yours, we found them in the Uchiha compound, they're living dust bunnies, and please, for the love of all that is holy, KEEP THEM AWAY FROM US.'

They went with them when the giant spiders (those found so far) were delivered to the Aburame family. This time Sasuke was the one to borrow Sakura's huge Sharpie.

**I bet those freaked him out BAD.**

_And what did they do to us, hm? Sympathy here. You weren't the one getting kicked in the face by one of these things._

**Technically true. Shouldn't they have hired a group of ANBU for this or something?**

_Yes. But the council's too damn cheap._

**Make them help out. Then they'll pay you right.**

_I'll think about it._

* * *

A/N: GODDAMMIT I hate QuickEdit. I have to proofread everything once on my computer first, than do it again on here. I'm kind of nervous about how it jumps around here, so tell me what you liked and didn't like about that. My apologies for the one use of bad fangirl-Japanese; it won't happen again, I swear! (grin)

I think I'm going to call this the 'Uchiha Library' arc.

In case you hadn't noticed, I've rather based a lot of this off MockV's wonderful story 'A Twist of Chance'. If you haven't read it yet, you should do so immediately. I promise you'll love it.

I'm working on three other ideas, two of which have been put to paper, and one which consists of a title and a plotbunny. I've also posted an Orochimaru oneshot (I kinda like him now), which you might want to read. I'm going to start posting the others fairly soon, hopefully, so check those out when I do if you want. I'm going to wrap this up now because I have lots of other stuff to do, and my dad's going to be home soon to take over the computer. Sooo...um, review, I guess. Or I'll send Emo Sasuke to 'Hn' at you.

Lilz


	4. Enter Kabuto and The Blondie Guy

A/N: Yeah, this is late. I have discovered that, seemingly, I can only do two creative things at once. Playing violin and writing—no problem. Playing violin, knitting a shawl, and writing—yeah. But I managed to gain a bit of inspiration (albeit mostly for my other, not-posted writing), and the will to slog through the two-and-one-half-hour editing this took. Be happy. Oh, and you may be wondering about the 目 characters in the summary—those are just my replacements for the brackets. (shakes fist) Damn you, FFN, and your non-alphabet-characters restriction...

Warnings: Um, a Kabuto warning. Mention of ANBU and the T&I department. A relative of Naruto appears. A lack of romance warning. Usage of underlining. That's...about it. (I really should start putting 'Written by a Thirteen-Year-Old Warning' up here, shouldn't I?)

Oh, and big thanks to TheWatcherandReader, who knows why.

* * *

The next morning, Sakura woke with no strange phrases echoing in her head at all. She did, however, have to rush to the bathroom and then fetch some fresh clothes. Male ninja had it so much easier. Kunoichi were sometimes teased for being weak, but Sakura bet _those_ men had never had to deal with periods. 

About midway through the morning, they'd cleared the basements and were starting on the third floors. Kakashi-sensei wandered in, careful to stay only in the (relatively) clean areas. He announced they were to take a two-day break.

Sakura didn't _think_ anything got broken in their exuberance at getting out of there, but she might have been wrong.

After a lunch at the wonderful Indian place Kakashi-sensei had shown her, she went back to the Uchiha compound. Naruto was probably off gulping down ramen, and Sasuke was probably... brooding somewhere. Yeah.

The huge silence of the building she was in began to scare her a little, and when a piece of her own hair brushed her arm she screamed. Still, she made it to the library without farther mishap. Glancing around and straining her ears for any movement, Sakura began sorting the scrolls. The library was on the ground floor, so they'd given it a perfunctory cleaning before moving on. Although she still seriously wished Kabuto had shown up to show her how to get rid of those coughs.

First, a basic (_very_ basic) sorting. Ninjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu, over there in that room. History in that one. Theory in this one. Biographies? History. A collection of Katon jutsu scrolls? In a pile with the rest of the ninja technique stuff. Genjutsu For Dummies? In a pile in the hall that Sakura was going to borrow for a while. Same with Obscure, Little-Used, and Boring Chakra Techniques. She had an impulse to stuff all the history and theory books and scrolls into a huge sack, Henge it into something less conspicuous, and drag it home to her bedroom. The main reason this impulse was not followed was because she couldn't find a large enough sack.

After dividing the huge, mixed-up library into the three side rooms, Sakura danced a little victory dance in the middle of the library floor. After that she sighed. Sorting them that accurately had been hard enough, now she was supposed to do _more_?

**Yup. Besides, you'll find more stuff you want the second time through.**

She was right. Resignedly, Sakura started with the Theory room. (It was smallest.) Most scrolls and books there were chakra theory and development, and she found more than a few she definitely wanted to take home. Restraining herself a little, she put medical theory in one pile, basic chakra theory in another, advanced in that one, and miscellaneous (really, what Uchiha bought The Guide to Tree Recognition?) in this one.

Afterwards, she gave up on any more organization for the rest of the day, and instead poked around until she found a ball of string which she could use to tie up her new books. Not that she was going to keep them or anything. Really. Henge-ing them into a nice-looking handbag, Sakura went home whistling.

Of course, she couldn't just stay in her room and read them. That would have been boring. Instead, Sakura changed out of her comfortable, functional t-shirt and shorts and into a tank top and short skirt, grabbing the sunscreen on her way to the roof. 

**What, no bikini this time?**

_Last time, I was in a tiny civilian town full of people who don't look up. Right now I'm at home, in a small city where the large ninja population use the roofs as a superhighway._

**Point taken. It was just a suggestion, anyway.**

Sakura happily stretched out on her roof (not in the center—she would have been trampled) in the summer sun and laid out her books in front of her. Three on medical theory/technique, two on taijutsu, five on history, two more on genjutsu, plus the Obscure, Little-Used, and Boring Chakra Techniques she'd picked up earlier. Idly, she picked out one of the medical books and lay it open in front of her face before waving to a passing ANBU who zipped past towards the Hokage tower. He (Sakura could tell because the ANBU had neglected to wear a shirt in the summer heat) nodded, already en route to the next rooftop.

After a few very-interesting-but-hard-to-concentrate-on pages, Sakura closed the book and re-stacked them all with a sigh. She loved reading, but her eyes just wouldn't focus right now. Instead she watched all the traffic on the nearby roofs, occasionally waving when she either saw someone she thought she'd seen before or when the ninja she was watching happened to be using the roof she was lying on.

Things got decidedly less warm, happy, and relaxing when the ANBU captain stopped on her roof.

* * *

She was terrifyingly tall—at least, from Sakura's point of view she was. And thin, lean like a rapier. 

And then she spoke. "You are Haruno Sakura?"

Sakura pushed herself up to a standing position. "Hai." Her tone was wary. When the ANBU wanted to speak to an ordinary genin, something was off.

The ANBU captain's expression was – naturally enough – invisible behind her mask. Her tone of voice, however, sounded just the slightest bit shocked. Sakura barely noticed this because of what the ANBU had actually _said_.

"Yakushi Kabuto is being detained on suspicion of gathering information for an attack on Konohagakure. You are the only one he is known to be close to, so Ibiki-sama wishes to speak with you."

Now how was _that_ for a shocker? Kabuto had always been..kind, for lack of a better word, to her. He'd helped her out quite a bit with chakra exercises, and had even taught her a couple of medical jutsu. She hadn't been lying to Kakashi-sensei about why she'd wanted to know when he'd be back.

Sakura nodded, decisively. "Let's go, then." And they set off over the rooftops. As the ANBU markedly slowed to let Sakura catch up, the pink-haired kunoichi was...to put it kindly, rather out of it.

Kabuto had always been kind to her. All her life Sakura had been able to talk to girls much easier than boys. Of late she'd grown better with Naruto and a few others, as well as Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei to some extent, by labeling them as 'gender-neutral' in her head. With Kabuto, those barriers—weren't there. They weren't exactly close, because it seemed to Sakura that Kabuto had trouble with the idea of a 'very close friend' at all, but she was closer to him than anyone outside her team apart from Ino. Most people had stayed away from him anyway, because of his rather creepy tendency to be crazy one minute and then 'Oh, sure, I'll be happy to help you with your (insert menial, boring chore or any kind of medical problem here)' the next. For Sakura, it was something she was mostly used to. Mostly. It could still be really creepy sometimes.

Sakura absently noticed that they weren't just taking a zigzag path through the roof highways of Konoha, but she was sure there were some spirals, hearts, and loop-de-loops as well. She tried to memorize the route as best she could, but got the feeling she was utterly failing. Oh well. It wasn't like it was impossible to get directions to ANBU (or possibly, Interrogation), anyway. Just really, really, really hard.

The ANBU captain suddenly jumped off the roof they were on. Sakura followed without question.

She led Sakura through a small, unimpressive door, through several hallways, down three flights of stairs, and up a rope ladder. Sakura, once again, refrained from asking any questions. Through the last door they entered was a Frankenstein-esque table and a heavily scarred man. Kabuto was strapped to the table, eyes a little wide but not visibly harmed. The man—

"Hello," said Morino Ibiki.

* * *

Sakura bowed. She bowed so deeply her shoulders were almost level with her hips, hands on thighs as usual when meeting someone. Of course, she'd seen this someone before. And she didn't think the usual 'Yoroshiku onegaishimasu' would be appropriate here. Instead, she said as respectfully as possible, "You wished to see me?" 

The deeply scarred, very scary man nodded. "Yes. Your friend here, Yakushi-san, is believed to have sold information about Konoha's defenses to another Hidden Village; one that was planning to attack us. Their attack was...postponed from the Chuunin exams when it was originally planned for."

Sakura's eyes hardened. "May I speak with him alone?"

The Head of Torture and Interrogation considered this for a moment. "Fifteen minutes, that is all. And please wear this chakra-restricting necklace and deposit all weapons in this box."

She did so, quietly and resignedly. Doubtless they'd be watched anyway. Oh well—it wasn't like Sakura was going to do anything they'd particularly mind. Or at any rate, dislike. Clasping the necklace, she could _feel_ her chakra slip from her grasp. A very unsettling thing, to a kunoichi whose best skill was chakra control.

Morino Ibiki lightly picked up the box, balancing it on one shoulder. He gestured for the female ANBU captain to follow him out the door, gently closing it behind them.

Sakura sighed, unstrapping Kabuto's upper half to allow him to sit up. "Kabuto, what have you done now?"

He groaned, rubbing his head with one hand. "Nothing I haven't been doing for quite a while, Sakura."

She closed her eyes, dropping her head onto his shoulder. They doubtless looked like a couple of lovebirds. "Alright, then; why?"

"I owed him – still owe him – enough that I should rightly serve him the rest of my life." He laughed, bitterly. "I don't see why it should matter to the ANBU, though. My personal life is none of their business, and Orochimaru-sama has decided that attacking Konoha would be counterproductive."

Orochimaru—that name again. Wasn't he the one who'd been in that tiny town searching for the 'Superman Eye' or whatever? Sakura still needed to find out who he was. "Why did he..."

She felt Kabuto smirk against her temple. "I think it was the death threats, myself. Officially, he announced to Otogakure that revenge on his old mentor was not necessary to the safety and well-being of the village, and that the resources that would have been used in the Konoha attack would be better distributed into trade."

That was a whole lot of information to take in, more than there appeared at first glance. First—Orochimaru was either the leader or a very high up official in the village of Sound. Second— that his old mentor was in Konoha, and was probably also high up. Third— that the person powerful enough to make Kakashi-sensei hide had gotten death threats, presumably from someone he was very afraid of. There was probably a lot more than that hidden in that little speech, but Sakura didn't feel up to dissecting it any farther.

Abruptly changing in mood, Kabuto smiled and sat up straighter on the hard table. "Hey, if – when – I get out of here, you want to work on some medical stuff?"

Sakura sat up on the metal chair, flipping her hair back, and laughed. Kabuto's mood switches often triggered her own. "Sure. If I know _anything_ about how paranoid ANBU are, they've been listening all this time and you'll be free to go after a few more truth tests and some lawyering."

He smiled, tilting his head to one side and adjusting his glasses with the hand that wasn't lightly pulling a strand of her hair. "Go on home, then. I'll see you soon enough."

She knocked on the door, smiling. Ibiki-sama gave her back her weapons and removed the necklace. They'd put on a right performance there. Doubtless if anyone had been actually watching, they'd have looked like a pair of teenagers in love. Or lust, take your pick. Their watchers might not have been fooled—but then again, the two friends were used to the act. It was a good way to get people to leave them alone, and they'd been working on it for a while. The good, best-of-class girl who _pretended_ to have a huge crush on the best-of-class boy, and the friendless, slightly creepy, scarily brilliant young medic. People tended to leave keep away from them, romantic or not, but a healthy dose of (fake) physical affection drove _everyone_ off.

The ANBU captain who'd guided her here showed Sakura to the door out with a polite goodbye. She sighed and began to wonder what the hell was up with Kabuto. Spying? He'd always seemed too smart for that, too ambitious. Someone who wouldn't be happy blindly following someone else. Sakura fully expected him to become a missing-nin when he was older, or at least come to some sort of neutrality agreement.

But then...he had said he owed this Orochimaru a lot. A lot a lot. So much that he'd have to spend the rest of his life paying off the debt.

It was at this time that Sakura realized she was lost. Nothing here looked even vaguely familiar. She sighed. She _knew _she should have spent more time studying those maps in the Academy than gazing at Sasuke. Even the graffiti patterns here were unfamiliar.

**Does your sensei realize you know the spray-paint patterns for half the gangs in Konoha?**

_I__ highly doubt he'd care._

She kept walking, hoping to find somewhere she knew, or at least someone to ask. The streets around ANBU headquarters were completely deserted, despite the graffiti. Apparently, while the gangs were brave enough to paint the walls, they avoided the place as much as possible. Sakura wondered what lay (or, perhaps, lurked) behind the walls she passed. More of ANBU HQ? Semi-criminal hideouts? Research labs?

After about half an hour of wandering around, Sakura started to see people. Not many, and most of them ducked inside nearby doors as soon as they saw her. Uh-oh. If people were scared, they had some reason for it. She put a hand on one of the kunai she'd gotten back from Morino-san's box, and made sure her shuriken pouch was easily reachable.

So, naturally enough, when a male voice from the shadows said "Hey," her first reaction was to throw the kunai at him. There was a 'thud' and a complaint of "You ninja people are always so damn edgy, un!"

Huh. Someone who, from his comment, was not one of 'you ninja people' had just dodged her kunai. Yup, definitely needed to train more.

The not-a-ninja guy slipped out into the visible light, laughing a little. The first thing Sakura noticed about him was that he was wearing the weirdest clothes she'd ever seen. The most beautiful and bright colours, but the outfit seemed to be composed mostly of sewn-together shreds of the wonderful multicoloured fabric. Plus he was wearing long gloves in summer. The second thing was the hair. It was more yellow than blond, and Sakura had seen that eye-searing shade on only one or two other people.

The third thing was that he was grinning. Widely. Possibly with a hint of insanity in there.

The fourth was that he was speaking again. "Do you, by any chance, know a Kazama Naruto?"

Blink. Blink. "No, sorry. I do know an Uzumaki by that name, though." He'd managed to surprise the truth out of her by dint of sheer randomness.

"Uzumaki...Uzumaki..." he mused. Then suddenly his face brightened. "Kushina-san! Thank you so much, kunoichi-san. Can I help you with anything?"

**Might as well.**

"Yeah, well..." Sakura kicked at the ground, feeling like a seven-year-old. "Actually, I'm lost. If you could just get me in the neighbourhood of the Hokage tower, that would help a lot."

The strange not-a-ninja clapped his hands. "Sure!"

He guided her expertly through the twisting maze of alleyways until they were within a block of Sakura's favourite restaurant, just a few streets over from the Hokage Tower. Bidding her good night – it was nearly sunset by then – he walked off, wondrous clothes flapping in the breeze.

It wasn't until she'd gotten home and retrieved her books from the roof that Sakura noticed she'd never gotten his name. And for that matter, she still hadn't got her kunai back.

After rubbing her eyes and trying to get both the usual words and the usual image of ice out of her head, Sakura wondered if she should tell Naruto about the weird guy looking for him. Pros: Her teammate wouldn't get brutally murdered or whatever. She could find out where he'd gotten those clothes, and why he was looking for Naruto in the first place. Cons: She'd have to tell him, and probably Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei as well, the circumstances of their meeting. That she'd managed to get lost in the relatively small town she'd lived in all her life. And maybe she'd be forced to tell them about being near ANBU headquarters, and then what the hell she was doing there in the first place.

Which would lead to them questioning her about Kabuto. No. Just no.

Instead, she thought while showering, she could just say a guy in weird clothes on the street asked her about a 'Kazama Naruto', and reacted oddly when she told him Naruto's name. Yeah. That would work. Plus it was totally true, even if the street was really a semi-deserted alley in the bad part of town.

She sighed and got dressed in practical clothes (**How boring,** said Inner Sakura) to meet Kakashi-sensei and the rest of her team in the now-mostly-clean Uchiha compound. Naturally, since they had the day off their actual _mission_, Kakashi-sensei was going to train them. Sakura was both annoyed and happy with this. Annoyed, because she was lazy and wanted to spend today having fun with Ino (who had finally gotten some free time again—her team was seriously overworked), and happy, because Kakashi had really slacked off on their training the past few weeks (even more than before) and Sakura was always eager to learn new things that would help her not get killed.

Sometimes (like just after a real, life-threatening fight) Sakura wondered why she'd signed up to be a ninja at all. But then she remembered the Wave mission—how Naruto, how all of them had seemed so changed. Not only by seeing death, but by seeing the death of two people all of them would have been friends with under other circumstances.

This, she reflected, was how soldiers must have felt back when there were actual armies. Having to kill people they would have been – and in some cases, were – drinking buddies with in other times.

But Sakura didn't want to be that kind of ninja. She wanted to help keep people from dying, not accelerate the end of their life. Kabuto had already taught her how to force peoples' own chakra and abilities to speed their healing. Maybe she'd work out some sort of deal with the medic-nin at the hospital, after increasing her chakra pool and stamina a bit more.

Sighing, she strode (as well as a thirteen-year-old girl could stride) through the streets of Konoha to the Uchiha compound.

* * *

Kakashi-sensei was waiting outside the door. He waved his book at her. "A little dust bunny tells me that someone spent some time in the Uchiha library yesterday..." 

Sakura was surprised. But not completely astonished. Her sensei often seemed to know everything, so it was best to pretend you were like him: uncaring. "Dust bunnies lie, Kakashi-sensei."

In answer to her shrug, he lifted what was visible of his eyebrow a little and followed her inside.

Naruto and Sasuke were arguing again. But there was something a little different about this fight. Neither of them were intent on injuring the other. Instead, they were pointing to passages in different books and then grabbing other books that supported their arguments and pointing out passages in _them_. It looked like a two-member debating team. Sakura laughed to herself quietly. Both of them had certainly changed from the obnoxious, ear-and-eye-singing dead last and the revenge-bent, arrogant Uchiha.

Now, they were parts of a whole. Team Seven had truly grown since Kakashi-sensei had kept them out of the Chuunin exams. Sakura herself had gone through many eye-opening revelations, had learnt more and changed. A poet would have compared them to a braided set of saplings, twining and growing around a larger tree. Sakura was not a poet. Instead, she compared them to a bunch of obnoxious brats and one lazy perverted grown-up who'd been squished together and forced to grow up into some sort of working order.

Which, in fact, they were.

Using every tiny bit of stealth she'd ever been taught, Sakura crept up behind both of them to peek in their books and listen while they were absorbed in their debate. Clapping her hands, she announced, "_Neither_ of you are right."

There was stunned silence at this, both Sasuke and Naruto about to break into protests. She shut them up by pulling one of the books she'd (cough) borrowed (cough) yesterday out of a pocket. Artfully concealing the Uchiha label on its spine, she flipped through and read aloud, "A person's self comes not solely from within, nor only from without. It is not completely known which affects them more, and perhaps it will never be known. All we know is that everything and everyone is always changing."

Sakura waved the book in their faces, still covering the bottom of the spine. "Master Kung, bi-atches. Beat _that_ citation."

Both her teammates had stunned looks on their faces, as if they couldn't believe their little kunoichi partner had just both quoted an extremely famous wise man – thus ending their nature-versus-nurture debate – and had called them 'bi-atches'. Sakura smiled politely and turned back to Kakashi. "Do you think that works, Kakashi-sensei?"

His eye bent into a little arch, which either meant he was smiling in approval or winking lewdly at her. She chose to believe the former, no matter what Inner Sakura was cackling in the back of her head.

Kakashi-sensei coughed.

They just looked at him.

He coughed again. "Erm, well... about the taijutsu regimen..."

"Yes?"

That was Naruto.

Finally deciding that walking around the swimming pool would do him no good, Kakashi announced, "I was thinking of setting you up to train every morning with Team Gai..."

Sakura's "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" could doubtlessly have been heard in foreign _universes_.

Naruto's face stretched out in a grin. "Oh, the Fuzzy-Eyebrows guy? He helped me out once."

Sasuke just stared, face as impassive as it was possible for him to make it without being actually dead. Sakura massaged her throat, then took the...er, _grace_ to inform him of Team Gai's eccentricities. Once she was done, Sasuke blinked. Then blinked again. "Okay, so the basics are... Tenten is a crazy long-range weapons master in training, Neji is a Hyuuga Branch House genius, Rock Lee is a mini-clone of their sensei, and Maito Gai is a completely and totally insane taijutsu master?"

Sakura nodded. "Who wears green spandex jumpsuits. And shouts about youth. DON'T leave that part out."

Sasuke suddenly and unexpectedly switched back to Uchiha-ese. He glared at Kakashi and uttered a menacing "Hn." Which Sakura – as well as Naruto, going by his expression – translated into "Why the hell are you dumping us with THIS guy, ero-sensei?! You're bad enough by yourself!"

Sakura nodded in agreement, deciding that Inner Sakura's words (and her own thoughts) deserved a bit of light, even if it put a big scratch on the personality she showed to the world at large. "What he said! I thought Hokage-sama was crazy enough appointing you for our teacher. Now you give us someone worse?"

She turned to Naruto with a pleading expression. "Lend us some support here, fellow team-member!"

Naruto himself just looked thoughtful, a face that looked out of place on him. "Well...you have to admit, that Maito Gai is pretty strong. The only other person that would give us the same kind of workout would be..." He glanced at Kakashi-sensei. "Anko-san, right?"

Kakashi nodded vigorously. "Yup, that's her. And there's no way I'm letting her near you three."

Anko, Anko... Hadn't Sakura heard somewhere that one of the exam proctors for the Chuunin Exam Kakashi-sensei had kept them out of was named Miterashi Anko?

"...and besides, I only said I was _thinking_ about it."

* * *

They never did get around to training, but Kakashi-sensei informed her that she'd better spend at least an hour every day walking, sitting, handstand-ing, or otherwise using chakra to keep herself on the surface of water. Or else. Sakura had to admit the threat would go a long ways towards ensuring that she'd work and build up her chakra reserves. 

Not more than a few blocks from the Uchiha compound, Sakura was dragged into a dark alley by someone who apparently had the strength of hand to keep his over her mouth no matter how hard she bit his palm. No doubt the fact that he was wearing gloves helped, though. _Wise-ass,_ she thought, pulling out a kunai.

"Whoa there, un!" It was that voice that made Sakura notice the person who was holding her wasn't some big, muscle-y type, and that he wasn't wearing typical thug clothes anyway. Besides, there were very few thugs in Konoha stupid enough to jump a kunoichi without a _very _good reason. One, for example, that she'd accept while holding something sharp to a vital organ or artery. Instead of the typical rough, dark, pants and shirt that were the 'uniform' of most thick-like-a-brick alley violencers, she could make out dimly that he was wearing bright colours. Many bright, tattered colours.

Her captor loosened the arm across her body when she relaxed, recognising him (though becoming no less wary). "What do you want?" she asked tiredly. It wasn't even noon, and she'd already had a long day.

He snickered quietly. "You just left the perfect opening for me to say something creepy, like 'You.' But I'm a nice person, so I won't. Probably, un." His voice took a darker tone as he whispered, "I want to know why the locals are calling my c– Naruto a demon."

Sakura laughed softly, bitterly. "I don't know. Nobody under a certain age knows, and there's a law against the ones who do know telling the ones who don't." Ripping herself out of his grasp, she leaned cautiously against the opposite wall of the alley and glared at him. "That good enough?"

Squinting, she saw him scowl. "No. It's not. But thank you anyway, un. Good day."

"Wait!" Sakura caught ahold of one of the beautiful fabric strips that composed his clothing as he turned to leave. "What's your name? And why are you asking questions about my teamm– friend?"

The not-a-ninja grunted in annoyance. "FYI, it's Kazama Takashi. And that last is for me to know, and for him to find out. Not you, yeah? Good _day_." The newly-named Kazama Takashi stomped off into the darker recesses of the alleyway.

**Well,** remarked Inner Sakura, **that was interesting.**

_Yeah. Very interesting indeed..._

At the mouth of the alleyway Sakura paused. Waitasec... _Kazama_ Takashi? He'd asked for a Kazama Naruto the day before, right? Oh dear. This was turning out to be very...weird. And not necessarily in a good way, though it probably was.

_Huh. So Naruto has family?_

* * *

A/N: No, Takashi is not an OC, although he's rather out of character. And I changed his hair colour a little.And yes, I have plans for him. Oh, and his clothes were inspired by some beautiful yarn made out of recycled silk. If you can't find a good, really close-up photo of a few strands by Googling, I'll test out my new camera's macro setting and post the result on my DeviantArt. 

'Walking around the pool' is my very twisted version of 'beating around the bush'. I'm very tired of using the original.

The verb 'lawyering' was coined by Eric Flint, author of the 1632 series, as well as many other books including The Philosophical Strangler.

Oh, and this story _is _367 compliant. Technically. You'll see, I promise.

I wonder if begging for reviews really works? (pushes Kazama Takashi out into the spotlight) If you review, you can tell me which canon character you think he is... I've probably made it really obvious, but oh well. Thank you all! (Yes, even the lurkers.)

Lilz


	5. The Really Frustrating Chapter

I_kind_ of have an excuse for why this is so late...an excuse for the past week, anyway. (sweatdrop) The Document Manager wouldn't let me upload a new document or edit one. I also have an excuse for not doing this last week—I had to play at a recital. Other than that, I'm just a very lazy person.

I wasn't able to edit some parts of this chapter enough so I like them (first section or so being a case in point) but most is okay. So don't go bailing out on me early, yeah? I swear, I'm writing a much better part now. Really. Although I'm still not writing as much as usual, and need more inspiration from somewhere—but I've written stuff lately that made me cackle with glee, so that's all right.

Oh, and does anyone know exactly how much older Kabuto is than Sakura? It'd be useful to know. I think it's about three years, but I'm not sure...

Warnings: I'm pretty sure I just warned you about most of the stuff that need warning... Well, still no romance, long authors notes, slight OOC-ness, mentions of Ibiki, crying Sakura, mentions of dead people (including one who is only slightly dead...but he'll get better), incorrect proportioning of names on the Memorial Stone, and an unknown voice that speaks in underlining. Enjoy!

* * *

The next day, Sakura found a kunai-pierced note on the wall in front of her open window. The mail-nin had been here, it seemed. Plucking the knife out and opening it, she recognized Kabuto's distinctive handwriting. Apparently the annoyed T&I department had practically thrown him out on his ass after being unable to pin anything more than vaguely criminal on him. Sakura smiled. Kabuto wasn't just a medic-nin, after all—much of the time they spent together was used for reading, learning about the world around them. Sakura herself had a fondness for fiction and history, while her friend's were a bit more widespread. Smart guy. If Sakura ever got in serious trouble, she'd probably be depending on him to pull her out.

Even though he might not. Kabuto was a rather out-for-himself kind of person. Still, as far as she could tell, Sakura was the only person he willingly spent time with. That had to count for something. Right?

**Right.**

Sakura went to watch her team spar. Naruto, she saw, was learning more every day, and that coupled with his insane stamina wouldn't take long to guarantee him Kage level. Sasuke, as usual, was cheating by using his Sharingan. She sighed. From what she'd read in the histories, chaotic-styled taijutsu (cough, like Naruto's almost completely disorganized type of it, cough) was just one of the ultimate weaknesses of the Uchiha clan. Well, it was _the_ ultimate weakness if you didn't count the arrogance, the shiftyness, and the general all-around prick-ness.

Of course, Uchiha in specific had their good points. They were fast, very much so. Plus the Sharingan, which had to count as cheating in the game of life. And Sasuke himself was a pretty cool guy, despite the general Uchiha and Sasuke-specific personality flaws.

"Maa," said Kakashi-sensei a few inches away. "Makes you feel old, doesn't it?"

Sakura jumped a little at his sudden appearance from nowhere. "Y-yeah, I guess. And it makes _me_ feel very...inferior."

He shrugged. "Work harder, then. Find what you're good at. Everybody's a genius in something, but most people never notice."

She nodded, slowly. The 'genii' like Sasuke and Neji seemed to be people slated from birth – or before – to have some sort of special ability. People like Rock Lee on the other hand... Sakura shuddered reflexively, but got over it. People like him worked hard, and got somewhere.

Later, she mentioned this to Kabuto, whining a little – not too much, he didn't have a high tolerance for whiny pointless people – about how she felt so weak in comparison to everyone else. His answer was almost the same. "So-called Academy student 'genii' are usually people who have everything laid out for them. Real ninja have to work for what they get."

Sakura nodded, opening her book again. "I feel really useless, though. I'm not strong like Naruto, I don't have a cool bloodline or set of family jutsu like Ino, Shikamaru, and half the other people I know, I'm not smart like you—"

Kabuto flipped a page. The quiet sound was so oddly deafening that she stopped speaking.

"You think I was born like this? I used to _hate_ reading books such as these. I'd rather have run around the village doing nothing with the other Academy brats. But..." He fell silent. She understood—at least, she understood as much as Kabuto wanted her to.

He'd made up his mind one day, for reasons of his own, to stop doing nothing and get smarter. To learn as much as he could. To become the best medic ever. And finally, perhaps, Sakura was fed up enough to follow him.

She stretched out on her sun-warmed rock and spread her book out in front of her. Laughing lightly at the phrase Kabuto had just whispered in her ear, Sakura relaxed. The two friends read peacefully together in the dappled light.

* * *

Sakura spent the rest of the day after Kabuto left trying to figure out a way to defy gravity. (And no, not like in that weird musical her parents had made her watch. Geez.) Just sticking her body to the wall took work, but making her hair, clothes, and book act as though 'west' was really 'down' was nearly impossible. She'd gotten as far as not making her shoulder-length hair fall over her face when she recognized someone on the street below. Kazama Takashi was threading his way expertly among the civilians, none seeming to notice him at all despite moving out of his way. This not-a-ninja guy was really something.

Well, it was really none of her business. Not yet, anyway. Still...

He was gone when Sakura next looked. Oh well — perhaps she'd ask Shino to track him for her. Or she could just try and tail him the next time he appeared.

She'd picked it up at the secondhand bookstore earlier because the cover stated it was about the Legendary Sannin: The Lives of Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru. If they were so legendary, why hadn't she had more than a vague recollection of them?

Skimming the parts solely on the Slug and Toad Sannin, Sakura learned that Orochimaru was the name a young man called Yamamoto Ren. _A generic surname and a given name that means 'lotus'? Okay, even Orochimaru is better than that. I see why he changed it._ That was probably why she hadn't remembered him earlier. She distantly recalled reading of a boringly-named infamous criminal, which was probably him. Perhaps his newer name of 'Orochimaru' hadn't even been mentioned.

Ren had been considered a candidate for Yondaime Hokage, but was expelled from Konoha when his illegal and inhumane 'experiments' had been discovered. He disappeared for a number of years, presumably in the search for immortality he was so obsessed with, before reappearing as the leader of Otogakure.

Sakura nearly tossed the book to the ground in disgust, but refrained from doing so — mostly because that's just not something you do to books. It scarcely told her anything on Orochimaru/Yamamoto Ren, focusing instead on Jiraiya, author of the Icha Icha series Kakashi-sensei was always reading, and Tsunade, the so-called Legendary Sucker. Oh well, it had refreshed her memory and given her a history to go with the name. Perhaps she'd just dump it in the 'History' room/pile of the Uchiha library later as some sort of down payment on the books she'd 'borrowed'.

She tucked the un-useful book into another zippered pocket, where she could feel its weight and was as concious of it as a brand. Trying to ignore this, Sakura headed for the stream.

She spent several minutes trying to adapt her amount of chakra to the swell and current. It was far more difficult than usual, because instead of merely standing on it she'd decided her wall-exercise would work here as well. It was interesting to peer down through the (moving) surface you were lying on, watching the weeds and fish.

**Careful,** cautioned Inner Sakura. **Don't get distracted by the pretty fishies. They want you to drown.**

Outer Sakura nodded, closing her eyes and concentrating on the chakra flow and the movement of the water. After her chakra had drained to one-quarter of her usual, she dragged herself back onto solid ground, panting. _Chakra-enhancing session one, completed._

**You sound like a video game.**

Ignoring her inner self's comment, Sakura let her thoughts drift back to yesterday. What had been with everyone? Especially Kabuto. He'd given here enough of his reasons for her to understand – though not necessarily agree – but what she really couldn't understand was why (or how) he'd gotten caught. ANBU were supposed to be the best, but Sakura had never known Kabuto to be less than genius with his plans and deceptions.

Unless, of course, he _wanted_ to get caught. But what reason would he have for that?

Disregarding her friend's twisted reasoning for the moment, Sakura tried to remember as much about ANBU T&I Headquarters as she could. Those patterns the female ANBU captain had led her in—there had to be some kind of reasoning behind them. She envisioned their route as best she could, ending with the door they'd entered with. The door...had been a normal door, like the ones on her parent's house. Not super-fortified or anything. And the building itself had looked fairly ordinary from the outside as well, just like every other building in the area.

The area of 'bad' Konoha that was composed by and large of short buildings with a few tall observation-platformed towers. Oh.

_Oh_.

The patterns the ANBU captain had led her in were meaningful after all—to the watchers on the towers of the ANBU headquarters. Sakura snorted softly. They'd probably meant something along the lines of 'Bringing interrogation aid to the questioning of a dangerous traitor'. And for all she knew, the graffiti on the walls were actually secret ANBU messages.

**You know, that was actually _plausible_. You're getting smarter!**

_Oh, shut up._

At a very young age, Sakura had decided to change. Her natural temperament was more suited to a very pissed off redhead than anything, and she'd combined that with a tendency to get angry about EVERYTHING. After undergoing some...less than pleasant childhood experiences related to this, she'd decided that it would be better to be more like the other kunoichi-in-training. More like Ino. So she'd concentrated on restraining herself, channeling her anger into tears rather than punches.

This suppression and concentration had given birth to Inner Sakura, who often did what she wanted, felt what she wanted, and was outspoken and happy about it. Sometimes Outer Sakura wondered if she'd have done better focusing on training her natural strengths and weaknesses than morphing them, especially when she narrowly avoided hearing about her Inner self's...encounters with the Kyuubi no Kitsune.

But the pink-haired, slightly wimpy, not-strong-but-starting-to-work-on-it, graceful-when-she-wanted-to-be and getting-smarter kunoichi was who she was, and she was just going to have to live with it. Although this proved rather tricky when Inner Sakura started chattering about the Kyuubi or teased Outer Sakura about Kakashi and Kabuto. (Didn't she understand the meaning of 'platonic'? Sheesh.)

**As fascinating as this is, I'd even rather hear you babble about ANBU T&I than our past history. Think about something else, already!**

_Yeah, sure, whatever._

T&I hadn't really been what she'd expected. Then again, why wouldn't it be clinical and clean, if very confusing in design? Icky dungeons were so out these days. Not that Torture and Interrogation didn't use some of the same methods, but they were expert about it. Careful. Like doctors, but in reverse—rather than putting people back together, they took people apart for the information they might hold.

Ick.

And what was with the neighborhood around T&I, anyway? So empty. Perhaps it was, indeed, more of ANBU HQ. But where the hell was it? The roundabout rooftop path had left Sakura no clue as to where T&I was, let alone where she'd met Kazama Takashi, the not-a-ninja who'd surprised her with his knowledge of shinobi customs and fighting styles.

**You know what?** asked—well, not really asked—Inner Sakura. **I want to go to the Memorial Stone.**

_Um, WHY?_

**Because I want to. So move it.**

Grumbling, Sakura hauled her tired self(s) across Konoha to the dark, carved stone that her sensei spent so much time staring at. _Okay, so what now?_

**You sit here and let me read the damn thing. Duh, Outer.**

Sakura, as usual, complied. Her inner self had an annoying tendency to do things that turned out hugely helpful later on, and then grin smugly and announce Told you so. Her eyes flicked over the names at Inner Sakura's command, Outer Sakura parsing the names slowly. There were so many. So, so many. Kakashi-sensei spent a large chunk of his time staring at just one or two names on here. How many other people had lost friends, lovers, family, teammates?

About two-thirds of the way down the huge block of names sat a glaring whitish patch, where a name had been carved and then chipped off. The vandal had done a very bad job of it, leaving part of the first kanji visible—

Wait. Was that 'Hatake'? Kakashi-sensei's father, maybe. Hatake...Hatake... Sakura remembered reading about a very infamous/famous Hatake somewhere, but she couldn't remember where. Definitely time to find out some of those memory-enhancing techniques Kabuto was always using, if she was this forgetful.

Without her command, Sakura's eyes kept flicking across the small rows of names, kanji after kanji after katakana after hiragana. There was one name much bigger than the others, one that had been written over with another name. She squinted, but it was hopeless trying to make either out well. She could barely make out the kanji for 'wind' that appeared on both names. Someone with two different names? Who changed their name? Weird. Her eyes kept moving, over names she recognized now as from having died in the Kyuubi attack. At the very end, below all the carved names, two were painfully etched out in pencil. The kanji were clumsy, and the pencil marks themselves had obviously been washed away by the rain many times, rewritten in the same hand.

Momochi Zabuza and Momochi Haku.

The clumsy hand wasn't simply that of someone with horrible handwriting. It was the careful, stiff writing of someone who'd never been taught properly. The clues weren't hard to put together.

"Oh Naruto," Outer Sakura whispered, in control of her mouth if not her eyes.

Finally, Inner Sakura released control of her eyes. Sakura fumbled in one of her many pockets for a pencil, finally finding a rather blunt one. Gently, then pressing harder, she traced the names in her own elegant writing, visible over Naruto's careful scratches.

And then Sakura, all of her, sat there at the foot of the Memorial Stone and cried. She wasn't really sure why, she hadn't cried the last time she'd thought about such things, but for a few minutes she just let the tears flow without worrying about where they were coming from. After they'd died down a bit, Sakura was about to get up...but the ground under her suddenly felt so comfortable...

* * *

And that was how Kakashi found her half an hour later, sobbing gently into a bare arm. She barely noticed when he picked her up, having cried herself – almost – to sleep.

"Sakura, Sakura, Sakura. What's happened now?" he muttered to himself. The girl was normally so reserved, so calm. He'd never seen her really cry before, even when she'd been a rather pathetic fangirl. Well, 'never' if you didn't count that time in Wave country. But many shinobi, at her (mental, at least) age, would have cried at that. He'd never seen her so seriously upset before. Actually, he'd never seen anyone so upset that they'd cried themselves to sleep.

_Ah, Obito. What would you do if you were here?_ Kakashi shifted Sakura's weight so he could tuck away his copy of Icha Icha. Now, where did his student live again?

Her parents were out—unusual for civilian parents, at this time of day. Hm. The lock was no challenge—it wouldn't have been one even to an Academy student with a bit of wire. The house was very clean, almost sterile. Morino Ibiki, the ultimate obsessive-compulsive when it came to keeping things perfectly tidy, would have been proud. Disregarding the couch, Kakashi climbed the slippery stairs (with the help of a little chakra) and set his student on her bed.

Her room was just as perfectly neat and clean as the rest of the house, everything in its right place. Unlike the house, which her parents obviously held an iron reign over... Everything was in its perfect place, yes, but there was a lot _more_ everything than in the rooms he'd seen so far.

Oo, what was this on the dresser? A _diary_. Nice.

The latest entry:

_Dear diary,_

_I feel so totally stupid writing that. It's not like I usually use this thing, anyway. My mother has some ideas about what 'proper' girls do. I should probably write about something you'll condone in case you ever read this, mom._

She went on to describe her day of shopping with Ino, doubtless attempting to bore her mother into giving up and going away. But for Kakashi, this provided plenty of information. Sakura was the sort of girl who felt stupid writing in diaries; he'd already thought as much. But that her mother had ideas about 'propriety'... Perhaps she didn't want her daughter becoming a kunoichi. Sadly (or not) this idea was not uncommon among the parents of first-generation ninja. They didn't want their children in dangerous situations, and when the young achived their goal of being allowed to do so and get paid for it, the parents often tried to discourage them any way they could.

Such as experiencing a sudden and severe bout of 'traditionalism'. Or trying to distance themselves from their now-adult child, so it might not hurt so much when they received a notice she'd died on a mission. He'd often encountered his female student out and about when normal girls would be home. And how many parents let their thirteen-year-old girls go out to dinner with an older man?

Of course, the older man was her sensei and had known her for a while now. Still. Her parents should by rights have insisted on giving him a 'talk' first, sensei and shinobi or not. Kakashi smiled bitterly. The old 'Rule of Thumb for Living In A Shinobi World' held true—the prettiest and most good-looking ones were also usually the ones with the hugest, most incurable mental disorders and complexes. Some inverse property of the universe seemed to force things that way.

Hey, look at Itachi. Look at Orochimaru. Look at the Akatsuki in total—no, better not go down that route. Look at Sasuke. And for that matter, look at himself. It wasn't as though he was particularly healthy in the brain.

Sighing, he turned away from his perfect student's perfect room (poor girl) and climbed onto her roof. _Obito, I think I need to visit you again..._

* * *

After batting away the by-now-familiar words in her head, Sakura tried to remember what had happened after her outburst by the Memorial Stone, but her mind went blank. Inner, you got any idea...

**Sorry, princess, can't help you with that.**

Huh. That was...odd. She'd read about what alchohol did to the system, and how it could cause small spans of forgetfulness, but she should have at least remembered going to a bar if she'd drunk that much. Still wondering what the hell she did last night, she tossed on some clothes and got ready for another day of cleaning the Uchiha district.

Her sensei was waiting for her at the door, naturally. "Ne, Sakura-chan...I have a job for you."

Lovely. "Really, Kakashi-sensei? What is it?" She did her best to keep a teenage-girl equivilant of his eye-smile on her face. If she were in a shoujo manga, her face would have sparkled with cuteness.

"Eheheh..." He scratched the back of his head. "Well, I was wondering if you could try doing a little training with Team Gai this morning?"

All pretense of a smile was gone from Sakura's face as she glared at him. "No freaki—"

Kakashi held up a hand. "I swear, just this once! Really! And if you don't totally hate it, I'm thinking of sending Naruto to them to patch all those holes in his taijutsu."

"Hmmm..." Sakura tapped her foot.

"Free dinner at Ayame's Buddhist Restaurant."

"Done. When and where do I go?"

* * *

Team Gai was actually...okay, Sakura thought, once you got past the spandex and youthfulness of half of it. After they'd gotten done shouting about her flames of youth, Gai and Lee settled down a bit and taught her a few gentle kata. She could _feel_ her muscles stretching and straining as she went through them—which was both cool and a little painful.

Neji was a little like a cross between Sakura herself and Sasuke—a very 'loner' person, but less of an 'I-will-glare-at-you-and-you-will-obey-my-every-whim-mere-mortals' than Sasuke, and (okay, she admitted it) smarter than her. A real genius. He was doing a much more advanced warm-up kata, before briefly turning his attention to a book of his own. Heeey, wait a sec...was that a copy of The Everyday Ninja's Guide to Insurance: Letting Others Pay For Your Property Destruction?

It was!

Tenten...now, Tenten was _nice_. She was smart and fun, and able to hit several moving targets very accurately with a barrage of weapons. Each. Sakura liked her a lot. Perhaps she would come see Team Gai more often...

Hmm, now if only she could make the two spandex warriors get a makeover. Oh, and get the younger one to stop throwing heart-shaped things at her. Yeah.

A sudden, reeling feeling hit her. Sakura realised she'd been thinking so hard she hadn't paid enough attention to her own movements and had overbalanced. Oh well, nothing to worry abou—

Ow. She must have hit her head on a rock. Yeowch, that hurt like crazy. And she was probably bleeding all over the place. Head wounds always bled a lot, Kabuto had told her. Aah! Why couldn't she _see_? It was starting to go dark...

* * *

What's happened? Where am I? Hm, it's...

**Ah, you're awake. Glad to hear it. We need you in here.**

Thank the GODS! I'm alive again, I'm alive, I'm FREE of that helplessness! I'm—

**Eh...sort of.**

...What?

**Well, you see—it's sort of like this...**

* * *

Sakura glanced around herself proudly. They'd gotten pretty far in cleaning the Uchiha district. Naruto – she was sure it was Naruto – went so far as to start a list of all the creatures they found hiding out. Huge animate dust bunnies, three-foot long spiders, super-moths that could chew through cardboard... Sakura herself had added a few. And she'd seen Sasuke pick up the list and give an approving 'Hn.' Kakashi-sensei...well, a few creature-names had appeared on that little piece of paper that she hadn't written, she knew Naruto hadn't written, and, well, Sasuke never wrote anything on there.

Somewhere in the middle of the second building, Sakura discovered a personal cache of scrolls, mostly high-level ninjutsu or kinjutsu. Quickly, she henge'd them into something that would fit in her purse and tucked them away to read later.

When she got home, she discovered that roughly half the scrolls and books were about explosions. Thank every god in existence she'd gotten to them before Naruto did—one of the first scrolls was on the use of Bunshin Daibakuha. Naruto with huge chakra pool plus bunshin jutsu with large chakra drain...equals a lot of Kage/Mizu/Doton/Whatever Bunshin. Naruto plus Bunshin Daibakuha...

Well, let's say that people would be very happy to increase their insurance premiums a hundredfold if it meant good, reliable Naruto Insurance. Rule number One Hundred and Sixty-Seven of Naruto-ism: Never, ever let Naruto near anything that explodes.

Sakura carefully tucked that load of literature under her bed and picked up her book. Obscure, Little-Used, and Boring Chakra Techniques had turned out to be very interesting after all. Even if some of the jutsu were obviously intended to be useless (who _really_ wants bright purple skin, anyway?). She'd scribbled down several to test later so far. Ones like the De-Spiderweb-ing technique, which would be hugely useful in the Uchiha district. The best so far was the Logic Plot Hole which would allow you to get out of quite a lot. Why in hell would anyone build a whole complex city just for the purpose of trapping those who came inside it? They wouldn't. Poof, no more traps. Or, very possibly, no more city.

Best of all, it didn't take that much chakra. Just very, very precise control. Which Sakura certainly had. It had fallen out of use because it would often cause chakra-based techniques to malfunction. The writer didn't say this in so many words, but it was obvious to Sakura that because the Logic Plot Hole by its nature got rid of things that were logically impossible, it rendered many if not all other ninjutsu and genjutsu unusable until you were out of range or it wore off. A last-resort-type, then. To be used should she ever be completely trapped in something which obviously couldn't happen—but nonetheless, was.

After reading another few pages, she decided that it should have been titled Chakra Techniques Invented By Bored People. Boredom is a very wonderous and dangerous thing. Hadn't she come up with her theory of Henge because she was bored? And Naruto's Oiroke no Jutsu had almost certainly come from boredom. People just got bored and started thinking 'What if... What if...' which led to weird things happening. She'd even heard of a missing-nin from Iwa who'd figured out how to blow up a whole village because he was bored.

Sakura was feeling rather bored now, in fact.

What if you could make a jutsu that would make food out of non-edible plant matter? That would be perfect. You'd need more than just a working knowledge of the food in question, so perhaps a...

Sakura laughed, waving a hand through the air. She was certainly not educated enough yet to create something that advanced.

(Are you sure? whispered a voice in her mind. Sakura didn't hear it.)

Maybe in a year or two. Besides, she had to learn more about seals first. Perhaps Tenten would help her—the weapons-master-in-training kept lots of long-range weapons in scrolls. Picking up the scrap of paper with the De-Spidering jutsu on it, Sakura headed back to the Uchiha district, unhearing of the new inhabitant in her mind.

* * *

A/N: Ouch. Not my favorite chapter—I wrote the first draft of this while I was at my grandmother's house for Christmas, and wasn't really able to write that much or that well. Some of this I really like, though, mostly the scenes I added afterwards. (Although, after re-formating this for the 4727983rd time in the hope that THIS time ffnet will save my changes, I'm starting to hate ALL of it. Hm, I wonder why?)

As for Naruto's tendency to go all dreamy-eyed around explosives — it's genetic. Really. Someday I'll write a oneshot explaining why Sakura knows to be wary of him around anything that could possibly explode. Someday. This probably comes from MogtheGnome's wonderful story about Naruto's obsession with Bunshin Daibakuha and where it leads—which is also likely the reason I switched to using Deidara as Naruto's relative instead of some random OC. (The random OC appears LATER.) Although I do have more important plans for Deidara now... Kukukukuku...

And see if you can figure out the rewritten name on the Memorial Stone—again, it's not that hard, but it's sort of foreshadowing until I can puzzle out how to fully reveal that information. (It will happen, I promise!) Ayame's Buddhist Restaurant is very possibly a cute new place started by Ichiraku's daughter, who wants to branch out a little into foreign cuisine while still keeping her religious customers.

I know Orochimaru _was_ probably his name. But I'm starting to plan some kind of plot point around 'Yamamoto Ren', so that part didn't get edited out. Yes, Sakura has a horrible memory sometimes. I'm basing this off my own inability to remember things I learned about in school six months ago—but to remember perfectly something a librarian mentioned offhand a year ago.

Neji's book was probably published by Akatsuki Press, makers of fine instructional books for all ninja since, uh, whenever Pein founded it. And written by Kakuzu.

Apologies for the long author's note, I...think that's everything for now. Review, ye readers, or be mailed to the apartment shared by Naruto and his pseudo-cousin!


	6. The Super Secret Uchiha Library of DOOM

A/N: Ouch. I only got two reviews for the last chapter, neither of them from my 'regular' reviewers(so thank you both!). Was it really that bad? (Author ducks behind her desk to hide from the pens, keyboards, and dead monitors thrown at her) No, I know it was, and I'm sorry. I hope this one is better. It's about double length, as a reverse-birthday present for you all. (I'm fourteen now. Hooray. It feels exactly the same.) Although, in an effort to get this done before dinner, this is only the third draft instead of the fourth, so hopefully you'll forgive me _most_ of the remaining errors. (This does not, of course, mean that you shouldn't tell me about them. Even if I don't remember to correct them later.) Plus, I'm leaving for a week in a few days, so no postings till I get back. Although I'm hoping to get plenty of writing and editing done, even without being able to check my details.

Warnings: Third-draft-ness, a lack of interaction between Sakura and her two teammates, the introduction of a secret passage, editing and author's-note-writing done really late at night. Also, cop-out scene endings and inconsistant line breaks.

* * *

Sakura was doing her best to spar with Rock Lee, when she felt one of her hands move without her orders. Lee blocked the punch, of course, but looked surprised. That particular attack wasn't in Sakura's usual style of movement. 

_Inner?_

There was no answer. She was probably off having 'fun' with the Kyuubi again. The punch was probably just some misfiring neurons in her brain.

But it happened again, her leg moving into a kick as she dodged. Again, it didn't land, but there was definitely something going on.

Wow, this girl is out of shape... The voice was nothing like Inner Sakura's, and distinctly male.

_...Okay, who are you and what are you doing in my head?_

After the spar was over (ended prematurely because of Sakura's distraction), the voice mentally rolled his eyes at her and announced I'm Obito, I'm dead, and that's all you need to know.

_Like hell._

Thbbbpppt!

_DIE!_ As she dozed off in exhaustion, Outer Sakura launched herself at the black-haired boy who'd invaded her mind. He ducked behind Inner Sakura, laughing long and loud.

* * *

The Uchiha 'district' was really just a few blocks, each filled with one building that contained bedrooms, kitchens, rooms for just being fancy, and gardens. Plus the enormous library which took up practically a whole floor by itself—it did, if you counted the three other huge rooms Sakura had sorted the scrolls into. All three buildings, plus plenty of land, were enclosed by a large wall. 

She could hear them in the first floor of the second building, squabbling. Team Seven had decided to clean floors from the first basement to the fourth above-ground story before tackling all the sub-basements, higher floors, and attics one at a time. Sakura whistled, noticing again the sheer _size_ of the Uchiha district. It wasn't that big, really, but it _looked_ like it was. Damn 'nobles' and their grandeur...

Sakura had volunteered to keep working on the library in the afternoons, while Naruto and Sasuke worked on whatever they felt needed it. Or just argued. If they were...together, like Inner Sakura said, Outer Sakura couldn't imagine how they'd gotten that way. Well, she could (one argument, one fight gone too far, and one deciding to lean in just that little bit...) but she couldn't imagine how they'd have _stayed_ that way.

Kakashi-sensei just sort of spectated where and when he felt like it. Sakura had become used to keeping 'her' books under a Henge and behind piles of other books, as she was quite certain stealing from the Uchiha library was not seen in a kindly light. By anyone. It wasn't by her, and she'd have punched anyone else who did so. Anyone _else_, naturally enough.

Oddly enough, sorting through the Uchiha books and scrolls didn't get boring for Sakura. It was fun, after she'd memorized the University Sorting System. Medical books? All right in that area, catagorized by theory and practical, than further sorted by what _kind_ of each. Ah, what was this? A first edition copy of one of Tsunade's few books! She would have been jealous of Sasuke, having this entire library to himself, had she not been...erm, _borrowing_ more than a few for herself. Actually, she probably would have booklifted the whole library if she'd been able. As it was, she hoped to persuade Sasuke to let her move into a room next to it once her parents let her leave home.

Thank the gods Kakashi-sensei had given her enough money from the Council to buy these good bookshelves and scroll cases. She'd had _nightmares_ about what would have happened if she hadn't had the shelves, as well as what things would be like if Naruto hadn't given her a squad of his Kage Bunshin to carry them. Inner Sakura and Obito had assured her they were just nightmares, and no, the Demon Bookworms didn't really exist. One of the early Uchiha, Obito had informed her, had figured out a way to keep any book-harming pests away from the books and scrolls. It was more effective if they were _in_ the library, but worked nearly as well anywhere in the Uchiha district.

Sakura herself made sure her books were kept clean, out of direct sunlight (mostly), and just dry enough. It seemed to work.

She wondered how Obito knew about all this stuff. Sakura distinctly recalled seeing his name _somewhere_ before, she just couldn't think quite where...

"Hi." Kakashi-sensei had just shunshin-ed in. Hurray for the blocking properties of full bookshelves, stacked and uncatagorized books, and Henge. Sakura unhurriedly tucked the last two texts of her pile in their rightful spots before standing up and dusting herself off.

"Yes, Sensei? You wanted something?"

"Ah, my student, you wound me! How dare anyone suggest that I only say 'Hello' to my students when I want them for something?!" He paused for a moment, dropping the act. "I need your help pulling Sasuke and Naruto off each other."

"They fighting again?" Sakura leaned back against a shelf, unconcerned. Well, not much.

Her sensei scratched the back of his neck. "Eh, sort of..."

She sighed. "How many breakables are in that room?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Not much. There was a vase, but I moved it. Now all that's really left in there are an empty desk with chair, a couple books, and a bed..."

Sakura was out of there so fast a non-ninja would have thought she was part Uchiha and had copied Kakashi's shunshin. Whether this was from the mention of the books or the bed, she wasn't completely sure.

When she burst open the doors with what was perhaps her best punch yet, Naruto and Sasuke had been frozen on opposite sides of the desk, glaring into each others' eyes. Glancing around, Sakura scooped up the small collection of books and scrolls, barely noticing the bruises on her teammates' bare skin. Which there was quite a lot of, as Inner Sakura remarked.

Ignoring her inner self, Sakura debated whether or not to just lock the two of them in here and leave them to it.

**Let me,** interrupted Inner Sakura suddenly. **I can probably knock them out, especially if Obito acts as strategist.**

_Probably?_

**What other choice do we have? If they beat each other up, the /house/ will probably come down. If they _don't_, and we leave them in here with a bed...**

_Okay, okay, I take your point. Just give me control again when you're done, all right?_

**Done. Okay, let's GO!**

Taking the backseat in her mind, Outer Sakura marvelled at what the two personalities in her head – well, one personality and one dead _person_ – could do if they wanted to. Naruto and Sasuke were probably somewhere near chuunin level by now, while she herself still had a long way to go. Her teammates would probably be known far and wide for their skills when they got older. Detachedly, she watched as Inner Sakura in her body, instructed by Obito, expertly manuvered around the two boys, keeping out of their line of sight. Distantly, she heard Obito's thought of Have to take them both out at once, before watching Inner Sakura put his thought into action with simotanious strikes at the nerve clusters in their necks, then scooped up the books again and scooted down the hallway before handing control back over to Outer Sakura.

_Wow. Just wow._

**Why, thank you, Outer.**

* * *

Kakashi blinked his one normal eye slowly. Well, that was a change. Perhaps his turning Sakura-chan over to Team Gai for some taijutsu instruction had been a good idea after all. Hmmm... her actions had been a little odd for a moment, though. There had been a minute or so after picking up the scrolls where she'd paused, head cocked, as though she was listening for instruction from a hidden source. Then her expression had completely changed, and she'd moved at a speed that wouldn't have shamed himself in the short period he'd spent as a gennin. 

Odd. Very odd.

And her expression had switched right back to normal when she'd slowed down in the hallway. Interesting.

Hatake Kakashi resolved from that moment on to watch his female student more closely.

* * *

Sakura waved idly at a passing ninja as she strolled home. Maybe her earlier suspicions of turning into Kakashi-sensei's mini-me had some truth to them—she felt less like a normal teenage girl every day, and more and more like a thoughtful, laid-back adult. Who booklifted. On next thought, maybe she was aiming to become the next Kazama Takashi instead. 

Yeah. That would be _much_ more fun.

Grinning, she cartwheeled once down the street, ending with a non-verbal 'Ta-da!' A small gaggle of Academy students were staring at her, and Sakura paused to wave furiously at them, still grinning.

_All the people I know influence my life. I'll never grow up to be a carbon copy of any one of them. (And someday, maybe, Rock Lee will grow to be less of a Maito Gai clone...Maybe.) _She could feel Obito's agreement in the back of her head—Inner Sakura was out somewhere, probably with the Kyuubi again.

God knows I never did, he added. I'd hate to have turned out like my other male teammate. Worse than your Sasuke, he was. And twice as emo.

* * *

That night, Sakura's parents were waiting for her. 

Oh. _Oh_.

Sakura had forgotten that her mother had left a note on the fridge that morning alerting her to the fact that they were going to have dinner 'as a family'. In _this_ family, that meant they wanted to Talk To Her. Most likely about some aspect of their life they didn't agree with. They'd already had Talks about Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, her C-rank-turned-A-rank mission to Wave, and many other things. Sakura had learned to dread these Talks, though not yet how to avoid them.

The subjects they _hadn't_ had talks about so far included her grades, her specialization (which she hadn't decided on yet, and hoped neither of her parents new such a thing existed), and Kabuto (among a few others). The last she dearly hoped they'd never find out about—even ninja weren't usually allowed to leave home without a damn good reason, and 'being banned from seeing my creepy friend who the head of ANBU T&I thinks betrayed our village' wasn't one of them.

"Ah, Sakura," this was her father, "You're a few minutes late. What happened?"

Sakura shrugged, trying to be as polite, nice, and non-suspicious-seeming as possible. "I took a wrong turning a while back, it took me some time to get back home." This was true, if 'a while' meant the first time she'd met Kazama Takashi.

Her mother nodded. "I'm glad you made it home by now." Their 'family dinners' were always later, never earlier. It was supposed to be bad for you to eat after eight o'clock in the evening, but Sakura's mother never paid attention to that particular 'rule'. "I made a western-style meal tonight, I hope you like it." She laughed, but it seemed a little forced to Sakura.

She smiled. "Thank you, mother." And meant it. The new food would help distract their attention from the Talk that was coming up.

"So," started her mother after everyone had started eating, "I hear you're helping clean out the Uchiha district?"

Sakura nodded, munching on a piece of fresh bread. "Yup. In the mornings, anyway. In the afternoons I work on the library."

Her mother's eyes narrowed. "Just you?"

Now, how to play this...

_Obito?_

Okay, so let's take it like this...

"Mostly, yeah. Sometimes Kakashi-sensei comes and 'supervises'." She smiled, making little air quotes around the last word.

" 'Supervises'?" Her mother's voice was innocently inquisitive. She most noticeably did /not/ raise an eyebrow.

Do it careful, warned Obito.

Sakura nodded, keeping her manner naïve and innocent-teenage-girl. She giggled just a little. "Well, mostly he just stands around and looks important. Sensei's so lazy!"

That seemed to work.

"All right. Though, they really should have given you a better teacher..."

She nodded. "He's a good jounin, not a good teacher. But he's pretty okay." Sakura smiled and shrugged.

Her mother nodded also, thoughtfully. "I'm a little...concerned about how much time you're spending with your...team, there."

Sakura giggled again. If Kakashi had been there, he might have wondered what she was high on. (And if Kabuto had been there, he would have smiled and pushed his glasses up on his nose, reflecting the light and hiding his eyes. He _knew _Sakura.) "Aw, mother... You _know_ it's okay. It's just a mission, nothing bad. Just cleaning and sorting things, mostly. Sasuke-kun and Naruto don't even fight as much now!"

Sakura's mother's mouth twisted to the side a little. "That's...good, I suppose."

Sakura herself looked down, and noticed that almost all the food was gone from the table. "May I be excused mother? It's late, and I'm kinda tired..."

Absentmindedly, her parents both assented. They'd probably be dissecting what she'd told them and how she'd acted until _they_ went to sleep.

_Thank you, Obito._

The sense of a smile radiated from the back of her mind. You're welcome, Sakura.

* * *

"Hey, Kabuto?" 

"Mm." He looked up from his book, raising his head a little from its cushion on her legs. Sakura closed her new Tsunade book on her finger and looked at him directly, plucking his glasses off with the other hand and laying them on the rock she was leaning against.

"I'm trying to figure out how Henge works."

He snickered a little, waving one hand. "Aw, come on Sakura, that's _easy_."

Sakura shook her head. "Not for me. How does it make things, like, solid?"

Kabuto started to laugh. His usual creepy giggle/cackle blended with a deeper, amused laugh. "Oh man, Sakura," he got out between snickers, "looks like you _really_ screwed up in the Academy!"

Inner Sakura growled at him, making several rude gestures along with a few _very_ inventive comments. Outer Sakura just waited for him to subside, before asking "Why?"

This set him off again, fully sitting up from his cross-legged leaning position. "Because..." (laugh) "Henge..." (snicker) "isn't..." (Bwahahahaha) "solid!" After a while it died down a little more. "Sorry. It's just totally hilarious that the kunoichi who was top of her class made the exact same mistake as the dead last."

And he refused to say any more on the subject.

Eventually, Sakura relaxed on the rock again, and Kabuto leaned back. He was her best friend more than Ino was, really. Not the kind of person you'd follow to hell and back—more the sort you'd try and get there ahead of to have tea, cookies, and medical scrolls waiting for him.

--

Kabuto smiled to himself, leaning against Sakura's legs. He needed to find a way to function with some degree of independence—a very difficult thing in the ninja world, where those who were 'disloyal' got killed by hunter-nin. Some way not to be affiliated with any one group except his own.

And he needed a partner. It was bad not to have _someone_ watching your back, for reasons other than searching for an opportunity to stab it. Someone just as good with medical techniques and chakra control as he was. Someone almost as smart. Sakura would do very well in a few years. Very well indeed.

* * *

Reading her bingo book on a snack break from the library, Sakura began to notice something. A disproportionate amount of S-class nukenin appeared to have long hair. Flipping through it again, she saw that nearly all the lower-ranked missing-nin had short hair. A fairly large percentage of the A-to-S-class ones also seemed to have some sort of widespread bloodline that allowed their hair to stay sticking straight up, instead of flopping down into their eyes as it so rightly should have. Hmm... Come to think of it, Naruto and Sasuke both appeared to have similar hair. Perhaps theirs was the first stage of it, staying up without hair gel but not staying _straight_ up? 

Perhaps the short hair/long hair thing was a matter of skill. Sakura herself had only shoulder-length hair, which gave some of the pleasure of long hair without the view-obscuring nuisence. Kurenai, jounin-sensei to Team Eight, had longish hair. She was a genjutsu master, someone with immense chakra control, skill with illusion, and a distinct lack of taijutsu use, where the hair might have gotten her killed. Hyuuga Neji had the Byakugan, and could therefore see _through_ his hair should he need to. A very, very talented and experienced shinobi might be able to overcome the disadvantages of long hair, so it was probably a status thing. I have long hair and I've survived, so mess with me at your own risk.

Come to that, Kazama Takashi had long hair as well. Huh.

And Sakura had noticed (from reading and observation) that the ninja who wore flashy clothes were either newbie gennin, trying to show how cool and badass they were, or very dangerous (and often missing-) shinobi who _were_ cool and badass and could therefore wear whatever they wanted. Hmmm...was there some sort of connection here?

She grinned, swallowing the last of her raspberries. Life was fun.

...And also interesting, as she found out when she tucked a book in the middle of a shelf. The only thing she could think as a door in the side wall appeared and opened, was _...the hell? I just put these bookcases in two days ago!_

Sakura could have sworn she heard Kabuto's voice in her head, saying, "Law Sixty-Seven of narrative casualty: All old family mansions will have tons of secret passages, no matter what. Law Sixty-Seven A: Never mind _when_ a bookcase was put in, at least one of them in the place will open a secret passage. Somehow."

Inner Sakura voiced their mutual thoughts: **How on earth does _that_ work?**

Outer Sakura wasn't sure if she meant the law or Kabuto's talking in her head.

Uh, girls, LOOK.

Following Obito's advice, Sakura glanced around her. Whoa. Awesome. A large passage of dark stone (how this was possible, the Uchiha buildings being made largely of wood and not having nearly enough space for this kind of thing, Sakura didn't ask) was illuminated by the sparse light from the door in the library wall. Stepping farther inside, she accidentally bumped one of the walls with a hand. Carvings...detailed ones, too.

**Hey, Sakura? Do you remember any of those light-making techniques from that book you 'borrowed' from here?**

_I think so. Why?_

Without any apparent trigger, the door back into the Uchiha library swung shut with a quiet, ominous _click_.

See, that's why.

Oops. Well, if this was _really_ because of the laws of Narrative Casualty, then there had to be some way out. And that way was probably...down. Fingers fumbling slightly, Sakura formed the simple handseals for the lamp-level Hikari technique. Fueled by just the tiniest drop of chakra, a globe of soft light sprang into being on her palm. This particular Hikari jutsu took an inordinate amount of chakra to start, but almost none to keep going, and had the peculiar quality of shining more light than it was bright—the perfect lamp.

Of course, thinking about _how_ you could make something shed more light than it shone made Sakura's head hurt. Stupid physically impossible ninjutsu...

It had dropped into obscurity because if shinobi _really_ were in a situation where they'd have to use a lamp, they were pretty much screwed anyway. And nobody likes giving out their trade secrets – especially ninja – so it had stayed out of civilian hands as well.

Raising it above her head, Sakura whistled. The carvings were beautiful, and they somehow gave the impression of brilliant colours despite the grey stone. She was sure they meant _something_, but had no idea what. Shrugging, she concentrated on not falling down the huge spiral staircase. _What is this? Some kind of secret entrance hall?_

The glow of her little light-globe lit everything up like moonlight. She'd taken off her sandals to make moving through the piles of books easier, and she could feel that the stairs were carved as well, though they were less defined in the center of each step. This place had been well used, once. Each turn of the spiral weirded her out a little more. This passage certainly would not fit in between the rooms and hallways—in fact, if she remembered correctly, they should be in the middle of the servants' kitchen now. How the hell did this _work_?

Sakura felt like some sort of explorer, albiet a severely mind-boggled one.

It had to have been at least half an hour later when the spiral staircase finally ended. A huge hall stretched out above and around her, so large that even her bright Hikari jutsu didn't reach the walls or ceiling. Glancing down, she saw the floor was made of a single, thick slab of etched glass. She could clearly tell, for once, that some of the lines were letters of a strange language, and some were drawings. Kneeling, she traced out the scene of a nine-tailed beast curled around a tree, sleeping peacefully while a human figure played a flute next to its head. This was quite possibly better art than what she'd seen in the galleries her parents had taken her to last year. And done so perfectly, too... Trailing a hand over a rare patch of smooth glass, she felt something that was almost warmth radiating from the floor, in what ought to have been underground. Come to that, the entire place felt more open and welcoming than it should have, not being visited for years.

That glass looks like ice, commented Obito.

It did, actually. Beautiful, though not in the least cold... Abandoning her search of the floor for now, Sakura stood up and walked away from the stair. After ten minutes or so – ye gods, this place was as long as a city block, and perhaps a great deal longer – she spotted the opposite wall. It wasn't, not quite, covered in doors, but nearly. Wow. Holding her light higher, she tried to memorize where she was standing before setting off along the wall. She didn't have to go far. A fairly small arched doorway, not more than ten feet high, was placed in what Sakura assumed was the center of the wall.

Glancing up, she squinted at the writing over the arch. Some of it, the largest bit, was in that English language they'd studied in the Academy. _All...your...jutsu...are...belong...to...us? That isn't just ungrammatical, it doesn't even really make sense..._

Happily, the rest of the writing was in normal Japanese characters, and made sense—sort of. 'The Super Secret Uchiha Library of DOOM'. Okay, so the Uchiha of long ago – or their builders, at least – were not without a sense of humour.

Sighing, Sakura decided that getting out was her _second_ priority, after exploring this other library a bit. She whistled again upon seeing one medium-sized ('large' for someone not used to Uchiha) room full of shelves and a desk, complete with swivel chair.

Someone in the Uchiha family must really have loved colours,observed Obito. He was right, too. Everything in here was in gorgeous, rich shades unlike the bleak beauty of the hall outside. On impulse, Sakura decided to have a look at the desk first. A stack of unfinished paperwork, which she didn't bother with after the first glance, a pulled glass ornament, which was also ignored after a few seconds spent admiring it, and a stack each of books and scrolls. The scrolls, on closer investigation, proved to be mostly instructions for kinjutsu copied by long-ago Uchiha. There had been plenty like these upstairs, in the main library and many private quarters, but none of those had been actual _kinjutsu_. Sakura made a mental note to come back here sometime after she'd found the way out and find one suitable for Naruto.

On top of the books were a few loose, scribbled-on sheets of paper. The first one was a diagram with a few notes on how to stop the exit door's catch from deteriorating into an unusable state. Excellent. Now she had a way out, because the notes mentioned the catch was one of the carvings on the first few steps, and part of the diagram would probably show her which, if she squinted at it long enough.

Shrugging, Sakura tucked the note in the pocket with Obscure, Little-Used, and Boring Chakra Techniques, which she was never giving up EVER. Screw Sasuke, screw theft laws, she was keeping that book for the rest of her life!

Crossing the ice-glass floor the second time was a little bit worse, mostly because it was easy to miss-aim and end up in a spiked pit, or something. It was creepy too, Sakura noticed, that even though the glow her lamp emitted should have been bright enough to light up a house, she was walking along in a little bubble of light in a huge sea of darkness. It was more disturbing still because her shadow pooled right under her feet, giving her the feeling she was about to sink into a well of nothingness at any minute.

To get all their thoughts off that, Obito and both the Sakura started pondering the little mysteries of life.

Like: Why doesn't it get dusty down here? I haven't seen any dust at all, and I'm pretty sure there aren't any cleaning ladies.

And _Why did Takashi-san close off after I mentioned how much I loved his clothes and wanted to know where I could get one?_

And even: **How does Kakashi eat through his mask? Is there some sort of specialized teleportation jutsu?**

Luckily, they'd only missed by a few meters, so none of them had gotten so far as to question what happened when Kakashi-sensei _sneezed_ in his mask. A close call, that. Glimpsing the entrancing carvings, Sakura whistled. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. The ones at the wide, sweeping end of the spiral were obviously meant to be seen going up, not coming down. Raising her light higher, Sakura saw that the dull surface of the outer spiral itself was covered in strange words and pictures that niggled at the back of her mind, where the blue-white of ice lay.

Shaking herself out of the trance she'd been in, Sakura closed her mind to all the carvings around her, and resolutely climbed up. She found it much more difficult when she had to open her eyes and search the bit of paper and then the stairs for the bit of carving necessary to open the door—but Obito took over for a minute or so, and all was well until she'd exited the door leading into the library.

That all changed as soon as she saw Kakashi leaning on a wall, Icha Icha book dangling from one hand.

Sakura was sure she went dead white at the sight of him. Not the same way she'd felt when she'd learned Kabuto was about to be interrogated by Morino Ibiki – which had been more of a 'What has he done now?' than anything – but more scared. Perhaps she was worse scared than she'd been in the fight with Zabuza and Haku. There was no killing intent this time, but that made it worse.

**Your hair gonna bleach from the shock and ya gonna spend the rest of your life looking like Ino's twin?** Somehow, that comment from her inner self helped a lot. Breathing deeply, she walked closer to Kakashi and nearly leaned on the wall next to him, before her sensei cut her off with a sharp gesture and a "Sit down."

Sakura really, really didn't want to sit down. She'd learned from her parents that it was best to stay standing during lectures and arguments, if you could, because then you could slip away without drawing the attention to yourself that getting up would. Nevertheless... She sighed, closing her eyes and dropping into a cross-legged position she could rise easily from.

"Look at me, Sakura." She felt a hand on her chin, tilting her face up. She obeyed, opening her eyes. Her sensei wasn't towering over her as she'd thought he would have, but was balancing on his toes and one hand, not letting his bent knees touch the ground. Even through the mask, she could make out his frown that was nearly crossing the barrier to becoming a scowl.

"I've been standing in this room for the past two hours. _Where were you?_" Sakura swallowed. _Inner? Obito? Some help here?_

Do you trust him?

_He's my sensei, of course I..._

Do you trust him with _this_? Right now?

_I–I'm not sure. I'd have to think about it for a while..._

**And Kakashi can spot a lie like a Nara can spot a cloud. We're screwed.**

Um...either give him a really lame excuse like he does, or give him an excuse that's not the total truth but still isn't a lie. He has some sort of extra sense for lies.

_I'm not going to ask how you know that..._ Their internal exchange hadn't taken more than a second or two, fortunately. Just as she was about to speak, Kakashi did so first.

"It's a bad idea to keep secrets from your teammates..." His piercing gaze would have worked better if she'd been able to see both eyes, Sharingan or not.

She sighed. "Okay, but it's not very believable..." Her sensei merely blinked, as if to say that he knew more about unbelievable than she ever would. Which was probably true.

"I was just putting a book on a shelf when this door opened from nowhere and sucked me down this big spiral staircase into a huuuuuge room that looked like it was made of ice! I had to trek all the way back up here, up all those steps. And—that's why I was gone for two hours." Sakura'd done her best to tell the story realisticly, which wasn't hard. She _had_ felt drawn to the beautiful carved staircase and hall, and she hadn't really been able to see much of the room other than the glass floor. Truth was always best—lies cause wrinkles, after all, and nobody can disprove a true story. Besides, it /sounded/ ridiculous enough that Kakashi would think she was lying.

"Hm..." Kakashi didn't move for several seconds, causing Inner Sakura to jump with delight that he was still touching their face. Apparently satisfied with what she'd given him, though, he straightened up and announced that they'd come back to this subject later. (Uh-oh.) Flipping his book right side up, her sensei walked out the window into the dusky evening.

The next morning, Sakura found a kunai nailing a note from Kakashi-sensei to her door. _Training only today, huh? And Gai's team is on a mission, so any taijutsu will be with our own teammates..._ Shrugging, she left for the bridge.

Oops. She was late—she could already hear a muted "Bastard!" from the training area they always used, the one closest to their meeting place. With a sigh, Sakura put her book away (she was beginning if there wasn't something to their little 'mini-me' theory after all) and sped up.

Naruto and Sasuke were sparring. Again. Well, it looked more like they'd started fighting over something and Kakashi had made them use proper taijutsu and call it a 'spar'. Shaking her head at their incorrigableness, Sakura walked up a nearby tree and checked the handseals for her new Hikari jutsu. The Hikari Grand Flash was one of the rather few in its orientation that was designed explicitly for battle, singing the cornea of all but the user and the ones the they had previously marked as excepted. With a few extra handseals, it could be modified to only work on humans (or, perhaps, nonhumans) so as not to blind the local wildlife as well.

Sakura decided against practicing this one today, because the rest of her team were moving too fast for her to tag them. Instead, she flipped through the book until she found another battle technique—a blade of /light/ that would get sharper the more chakra you put into it, and the more firmly you controlled that chakra. It was very simple, only three handseals.

A footnote at the bottom of the page notified her that this 'laser' was technically a Kinjutsu, because it was difficult to balance the control with the output of chakra. Most shinobi were used to using plenty of chakra, and a medium amount of control, so they ended up simotaniously pumping in too much chakra and not controlling it well enough. This had the effect of a small explosion – not large enough to kill anything other than the person attempting to wield the blade of light.

Hmm. Well, she had plenty of chakra control – and very little chakra. It should be easy enough, if she was careful... Sakura tried using the tiniest drop of chakra she could while forming the seals. A red line of light six inches long and very thin sprang from the middle fingertip of each hand. She tried slicing a nearby leaf, only to realize when it didn't work that she must not have put _enough_ chakra into the blade.

By the time Kakashi arrived, she'd gotten it just about right—not fine enough to slice a hair, but good enough for cutting coarse cotton—or skin. Lengthening it was proving rather more difficult. Upon spotting her sensei's chakra signature in the distance, she abruptly withdrew her chakra from the 'laser', pulling out a book with the Uchiha fan conspiciously absent from the spine. Ah, the wonders of excellent chakra control, some skill with Henge, and a few very specific chemicals.

Thank you, Kabuto.

* * *

Kakashi blinked as he felt his female student's chakra blink once, as though she'd just released a technique. She probably had—among all three of them, she was the best at learning things for herself. Sakura was, quite possibly, the best kunoichi he could have been assigned. She wasn't very strong, but all she needed was some incentive and encouragment to work hard. 

He distantly recalled her once having said she liked "getting things done." She actually preferred cleaning the Uchiha district and organizing the vast library to working on most ninja skills. "You can work all day on ninjutsu, genjutsu, and even taijutsu, and get almost nothing done by nightfall. But when you've cleaned your kitchen, you have a clean kitchen." She'd laughed, waving a hand in the air.

The boys, on the other hand... Sasuke was a loner, and not in a good way like Sakura apparently was. He had, it seemed, inherited the Uchiha curse of being a perpetually broody teenager in full, complete with a brother complex. The Academy instructors didn't call him a genius for no reason...but he could at least _work_ on it. Hell, Rock Lee could beat him easily, having worked hard since having met Gai and now being near jounin-level in taijutsu. The kid needed to learn that, while getting stronger to kill off his older brother was a nice idea (if a little stupid), he'd need to focus on _non_-lethal things as well.

And Naruto—well, Naruto was a whole big can of worms all by himself. Even if you tossed the whole Kyuubi thing aside, he was still a big can of worms. He was Minato-sensei's son—that in itself wouldn't have been a big issue, but it was another worm in the can. The straw that broke the ninja's back, whatever. And it hurt, just a little, that the team he was in now was so much like the one he'd been in all those years ago—mess with the hair colours and the names (maybe toss in a mask or two), and you could probably fool a group of S-class missing-nin.

But the real problem was the lack of education. Naruto should have, by rights, learned a lot more in the Academy than he had. This was mostly the fault of all the teachers who _couldn't_ just toss the whole Kyuubi thing aside. It had been too traumatic for them, and even if Naruto was just a little kid, even had they known he was the Yondaime's son, they weren't able to get past that.

He wasn't even sure the kid could _read_ all that well. It would explain a lot, really.

After going over a (long) list of Naruto's strengths and weaknesses in his head, Kakashi decided there was no way he could handle the kid by himself. He just wasn't really wired to be a teacher. Kurenai—too busy. Asuma—was suffering from the same problem. Gai—was already helping somewhat, and besides, there was no way he would allow his students to be corrupted by the Green Beast of Konoha. He could at least prevent that. All the other experienced people he knew were either too busy to help, too traumatized (see the above paragraph), or people he just plain wanted his young, unformed students to stay the hell away from.

Suddenly, as he neared the clearing where all three of his students were waiting, Kakashi smiled. Perfect. He'd ask _Sakura_ to help him.

* * *

Sakura grinned to herself as Kakashi walked into sight, then paused briefly. His one visible eye blinked, then blinked again. An eyebrow – possibly both of them – was raised. She waved from behind her book. You could get so much done by keeping a book with you to read at odd moments. Why in hell did her sensei read porn all the time, anyway? Something like _this_ was much more useful. 

Can't say I don't agree with you there, tacked on Obito. There was a slightly rueful tone to his thought. Sakura decided she probably didn't want to know why.

While Kakashi was still busy being freaked out (or at least, mildly surprised) by her looking exactly like him sans mask and hitai-ate, Sakura was re-reading the chapter on chakra strings. They didn't look _too_ difficult, but they might take up more chakra than she was willing to spare. Frowning, she decided to ask Kakashi-sensei for help later, when Mr. Super-I-Will-Copy-Every-Jutsu-I-See-Uchiha wasn't around. He and Naruto had called an end to their bought, and were currently sitting slumped side-by-side against a particularly large tree.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei, what are we going to do for today?"

He shrugged. It was a sign of how much she'd gotten used to him that she no longer reacted to his arriving hours after what most people would consider 'on time'. "I was planning on working with some more chakra control exercises with Sasuke and Naruto. After that, I need your help with something."

Internally, Sakura raised an eyebrow. **Kakashi needs _our_ help with something? I'm both jumping for joy and afraid he wants us to do his taxes, or something equally horrendous.**

_Oh god. Kakashi's taxes. I don't even **want** to know what they're like—ours are bad enough._

Sighing softly, she watched her teammates working on their chakra control. Naruto's wasn't quite abysmal, but only because he'd been working on it. Sasuke...Sasuke was much better than Naruto, but she'd found one thing she definitely outstripped him at that the Last Uchiha couldn't copy. Naruto and her had gotten flip sides of the deal—most shinobi had to train _both_ their stamina and control. They'd have to work _more_ on each single aspect, but they were good enough to focus almost only on that.

She sighed again, watching her sensei guide both her male teammates through the exercise. Kakashi-sensei rarely taught _her_ anything. Perhaps this was because he knew she could learn for herself, and go to the appropriate people for help when she needed it.

It still hurt.

**We're gonna get stronger, shannaro!**

_Yeah. Strong like Kabuto._

So let's get to work.

With a small smile, Sakura dug around in her pockets until she found a mirror. Start with the hair—that bright, sickening, all-too-visible pink hair. Hmm... Naruto's Chuunin friend came to mind, the weird one with the 'ai' tattoo, gourd of sand, and bright red hair. Why not?

Peering into the mirror that was leaning against her knees, Sakura formed the single handseal for Henge, and whispered the name of the technique. Her hair was now the bright-dark red of Sabaku no Gaara's. Frowning, she plucked at a lock in front of her eyes, inspecting it. The red was a nice colour, but something less obvious would be nice. Black was a no-no—it was just about as far from her Pepto-Bismol pink as possible, and it would be way too much of a drain on her chakra. Darker, though. And add a little brown...

A Haruno Sakura with perfect aubern hair smirked at herself in the mirror.

Now for her face. Everything else could stay the same, but her face was recognizable even with the aubern hair. Nose...make it a little longer, not long enough to be really ugly, but enough not to be perfect. Eyes... The bright green was far too noticable. She toned it down a little, then morphed the colour from green to blue, a common enough shade. As for the rest of her face—cheekbones a millimeter higher, lips a touch thinner...

Excellent. Sakura surveyed herself in the mirror, taking note with both eye and chakra senses of how her 'new' face was different from her usual one. Peering through the trees, she saw the rest of Team Seven hard at work. Now, what else to do that wouldn't attract their notice while she was practicing it...

A name. She liked how this version of herself looked, and might use it again. Not something obviously made up, like 'Yamamoto Ai', but something normal. Hmm. What about Naomi? It was kind of weird not to have a surname, but Tsunade, Tenten, and Gaara all managed well enough without. Yeah, Naomi worked. And a cover story? Orphan would be easiest, orphan and street kid. Someone who'd learned a few ninja techniques by watching, and had found a mentor in Yakushi Kabuto. Perfect—Kabuto wouldn't care what she did, as long as it didn't mess up his plans, and would back her up if needed.

Peering through the veil of trees again, she saw Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke were winding down. Uh-oh.

"Kai!"

Before stuffing the mirror back into her pocket, Sakura glanced at herself in it. Her eyes were a little more blue, and her hair still a fraction darker, but nothing too noticable. Good. Making sure all her pockets were closed, she climbed through the screen of trees seperating her from her team, using chakra when needed. She used a little more of it to stick herself to a branch directly above the rest of Team Seven, not bothering to conceal her chakra. Naruto probably wouldn't notice, and Kakashi and Sasuke wouldn't care.

Sasuke himself seemed too absorbed in what he was doing to notice much of anything, actually. What was he... Sakura nearly fell of her perch trying to see, only staying because she'd learned very thoroughly how to stick herself to any kind of surface with chakra. Leaning out over the air, she saw that he seemed to be trying to burn small holes through a tree that was studded with others from his earlier attempts. A few other trees, many badly scorched, were the results of earlier work. She nodded approvingly. Big fireballs were useful, but tiny streams of fire were even more so.

As she watched, Kakashi clapped his hands and called an end to the training, pronouncing that the rest of the day was their own.

_Not for us, it's not._

Sakura sighed, using chakra to cushion her feet for the jump to the ground, moving as soon as she could no longer sense the boys' chakra. Time to face the music—or rather, the sensei.

* * *

Kakashi moved not a muscle as his one and only female student landed gracefully in front of him. She'd improved a great deal from the whiny fangirl she'd been not so long ago. Very few people would have been able to learn so much in such a short time. Sakura wasn't a conventionally termed 'genius', but she was certainly smart. Which often counted for more—Shikamaru was technically a genius, but he was more like Sakura than any of the rather unstable bloodline 'genius'es. 

Frowning under his mask, Kakashi stated, "I need your help with Naruto and Sasuke."

Sakura's face twisted slightly, before relaxing back into a frown. Her facial control was fairly good, but he'd learned how to read lack-of-expressions very early in life.

She said nothing.

"Honestly...I have no idea how to organize training for them. You, I can rely on to train well and not do anything stupid, but those two..." He rubbed the back of his neck. He'd _known_ Naruto would be trouble, and Sasuke had had to be messed up from everything. He just hadn't thought it would be quite _this_ bad, for either of them.

Sakura's face relaxed further, into the expressionless countenance she almost certainly wore when sleeping. "After this mission is over, Kakashi-sensei. Until then, just keep them practicing what they already know until they have it done perfect." She smiled. "Of course, you were probably planning on that anyway, ne? Well, I promise to help after we're done with the Uchiha compound."

Kakashi's one visible eye blinked once. She'd said 'promise'. Usually, even in situations where someone was trying to _make_ her swear to something, she'd just imply, nod, or do something equally ambiguously affirming.

"Aa. Oh, by the way, are you nearly done with that library yet? Because we _do_ have to give the Council a copy of the catalogue when you've written it. Ja!" He shunshin-ed away, relishing in the surprised, slightly horrified expression on Sakura's face as he disappeared.

* * *

_Oh gods. The cataloguing! What happens if they go through the shelves after I've returned the books we borrowed and find extra ones there? What happens if I list the ones we have and they look and they're not there?_

Calm down, Outer Sakura. Obito, speaking up before Inner Sakura for once. The Council won't go through the precious Library of their Last Uchiha except in a really huge emergency, and if that happens you can henge yours, stick them in a pocket, and dump them on a random shelf. Whoever's searching wouldn't care, as long as they got what they needed. And there's not much need for worry, anyway.

_Oh? And why not?_

Very few people can take books out of the Uchiha compound. There's a very..._selective_ jutsu placed on the books and walls.

Sakura got the feeling there was more that he wasn't telling her, but let it slide.

--

_I'm bored._

**That was fast.** Ah, her Inner self was back.

_Yeah, well..._

Ino invited us out to lunch today. Did you forget?

"Oh yeah!"

Ino had chosen a nice little Western place for the 'lunch', which turned out to be more of a party than anything. Apart from Sakura herself and Ino's own team, Kiba, Naruto, Tenten, Hinata, and the usually asocial Neji, Shino, and Sasuke were there. The last three seemed to have huddled together at the edge of the group for protection of their loner status...which rather defeated the purpose, now that she thought about it.

Smiling, she slid into a seat between Hinata and Naruto, grinning wider at Ino's "Haven't seen you in _ages_ Forhead Girl! Start talking!"

--

Half an hour later, she wasn't smiling. The topic had shifted to family traditions, then settled on the handed-down ninja techniques. Even Hinata and the Asocial Trio had joined in. Sakura and Naruto, the only two without family techniques to chat about, glanced at each other. They glanced at everyone else. They nodded.

Two minutes later, Sasuke began asking his female teammate to pass the salt, before discovering she was no longer there. He shrugged and leaned over the space where her empty plate sat.

Sakura sat on a high branch and began to cry, softly. It _hurt_ to be reminded that she was the only ninja of her generation with no special abilities. Naruto, while he had no family techniques or bloodlines (that she knew of—his 'cousin' might very well change that), had an insane amount of both stamina and chakra. Everyone. Everyone but her. All the other clanless ninja had failed the jounin's tests.

It was just her. Haruno Sakura, the 'weak link' of Team Seven.

Dashing the tears from her eyes, she suddenly jumped down from her branch. And whispered "Katon: Gokakyuu no Jutsu!" Her fireballs weren't nearly as huge as Sasuke's or Kakashi's, but they were still a wonderful method of venting stress.

After burning herself a few times, Sakura turned to explosions. Tags, chemicals, whatever she had on her that could be made to blow up. Dimly, she noticed that she was laughing. And that two other voices were laughing along with her.

**You want to get stronger, huh?**

We can help you with that.

* * *

Kakashi very quietly shook his head to himself. He'd thought Sakura would be all right on her own, learning things from books and asking for help when it was needed. It seemed he'd been wrong. 

Very wrong.

Leaning against a tree, Kakashi was careful not to let his grip on his concealed chakra slip. Apparently, Sasuke wasn't the only student he'd have to worry about latching onto power. He'd have to keep an eye on all three now...how troublesome.

_Do all jounin-sensei have to watch their gennin for attempts to take over the world? Or is it just me?_

* * *

For once, Sakura did not merely catch a glimpse of ice. Instead, she stood in a place that...wasn't. It wasn't black, it wasn't white, it wasn't coloured, it wasn't gray, it wasn't big, it wasn't tiny. It just _wasn't_. The only things that _were_, in that place of nonexistence, were a huge block of ice, and an icepick a short distance from it. 

The ice... Sakura stepped closer, or whatever she did to move in this emptiness. There was a _person_ inside. Peering through the flaws in the blue-white cube, she tried to see what they looked like. Wait...was that—

It was. Pink hair. She tried to get a better look, but as soon as she saw something for sure, she was certain it was something different.

"**Don't let her out. No matter what, don't break the ice.**" That voice...it sounded a little like Inner Sakura, but not quite. And she was certain it had been out loud, as well. This felt so...un-dream-like. Almost as if she was really standing in a place where nothing existed but her, the ice girl, and the icepick.

"**Don't touch it!**" And with that final ringing (how could it ring?) shout, Sakura felt a release of something. As though someone – or something – had been there, but was now gone.

Sakura stared through the ice, at the girl – herself? – that kept shifting, shifting...but never moving. Frozen. Why...

_Why..._

Slowly, she bent down to grab the ice pick and grimly began to hack at the ice.

* * *

A/N: 'Genius' has the most frustrating English plural ever. My dictionary says it's 'geniuses' for 2, 3, and 8, and 'genii' for 6, 7, and 9. What I want to know is, where did four, five, and everything above nine go? 

Yes, I realize that Obito is grossly out of character. He's – partly at least – supposed to be. He's been forced to sit there doing nothing but watching for umpteen years, and has therefore gotten used to sitting there considering things. The ability to make things known to other people (if Inner and Outer Sakura really are plural) has enabled him to speak, but thinking about things and not doing anything is a habit. Besides, I would imagine that he'd be partly 'asleep'. No matter what percentage of a human's brain is normally used by the owner, I don't think there's quite enough room for an entire, previously living person to be fully active all the time. Outer and Inner Sakura manage because they used to be the _same_ person.

Booklifting is my new word. I like it.

And yeah, I'm downplaying the villagers' hatred of Naruto. I don't think, in this story, they really have any. He's a painful reminder more than anything, so everyone just tries to ignore him. I find it _very_ unrealistic that an entire town of at least partly-informed people would hate a kid that knew nothing about the entire Kyuubi mess. Although – (author scribbles on hand due to lack of notepaper) – they could have been glaring at his _stomach_, not him... A useful possibility, perhaps.

...Yes, gennin get taxed. Because they're technically adults, as they hold a job. If you're old enough to kill for money, you're old enough to give some of that money back to the government—or at least, that's what the paper-pushers say.

I'm sure there was plenty more I was going to say, but I'm far too tired right now. I'll either edit here or post the notes on my brand new livejournal and give you all the link. (Author proceeds to fall asleep on keyboard and, appropriately enough, manages to stick down the 'z' key.)


	7. Recovery: A Short Interlude

A/N: A short, transition-y interlude, posted to remind you of my status among the living while I refine the next chapter. Yes, I have it written, but it needs quite a bit more work. This chapter-thingie _does_ contain necessary information, though, so I suggest reading it. (And maybe even reviewing if you have no other urgent appointments.)

Warnings: This chapter actually does have warnings. Well, _a_ warning. Inner Sakura swears a lot more when she's tired, apparently. And it seems manifesting herself into Outer Sakura's mind takes a lot of energy for her. Among other news, there's an omake (extra) at the end of this little interlude, and I really have no idea how long it would take a ninja to get back in shape after sleeping for a week.

* * *

Are you sure we should have done that?

**Of course I'm sure. It means _we_ know more, so we can tell her what she needs to know when she needs it. And I'm sure the flashbacks will stop soon.**

...Flashbacks?

**Nothing to worry about. Just some leftover feelings.**

You're really certain?

**Duh. Or I wouldn't have even _thought_ about trying this.**

Well, all right...

* * *

The world began to blur into place around her. White. She was looking at something white. And laying on something that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Only the white reassured her that no, she wasn't still in that realm of nothingness. Closing her eyes against the rather blinding lack of colour, Sakura focused her chakra senses. There were lots of people around, but only one other human in the room. Someone familiar.

"S-sensei?" It hurt to speak. She must not have drunk water in quite a while, then. Strange how well her mind was working.

"Aa." She heard the rustle of closing pages as Kakashi-sensei actually _put down_ his Icha Icha book and stood up. "You've given your teammates quite the scare, Sakura-chan. Although your medic seems to have done an excellent job."

"How long?" Her throat still hurt, but speaking wasn't as hard now. She opened one eye, and could see a bit of silver. He must have been a foot or two away, then.

"A week. I'm afraid a good deal of your muscles may have lost strength, but it shouldn't take too long to get back up to speed."

Sakura groaned. This was a nightmare! She'd be ages getting up to her _pre_-coma(or something) state, never mind stronger. At least she could request the help of her medic with that.

"You said...medic?" Her voice was annoyingly croaky, she noticed.

The silver hair bobbed in response. "Aa. Grey-haired kid, real young. Anyone you know?"

"Yeah." She did not elaborate. Of course the other medics would have left her with Kabuto, even if he hadn't wanted to treat her. She was well-known as 'that pink-haired girl who seems to be glued to the hip of Creepy Kabuto', and no doubt the others were scared of her. Not to mention, none of them would want to be caught messing(in any sense) with Kabuto's girl.

Now, what had happ—Oh. That's what. But really, why had she just snapped like that? It wasn't the first time her..._friends_ had discussed topics that brought her own lack of strength to her attention. Maybe it was because she'd already started trying to get better and that conversation had made her remember how far she _hadn't_ gotten. Whatever had happened, it had led to the weird not-there-place and the ice girl. What the hell did those mean?

And where _was_ Inner Sakura? Normally she'd have answered at least one question by now, dormant or not. Obito she wasn't as worried about, since he usually kept quiet anyway. But still...it was strange.

Sakura saw her sensei's hair begin to retreat from sight, and hastily asked "What happened while I was unconscious?" The words came out a bit slurred, but still intelligible. At least, she hoped they were.

She heard him sit down again, unseen but still there. "Naruto and Sasuke, once they stopped panicking over your condition, finished cleaning the Uchiha compound and are now lazing around doing nothing because Naruto utterly _refuses_ to do any kind of mission without you." She heard a soft _click_, then the creak of Kakashi rising from his chair. "Your medic should be here any minute. Ja!"

Sakura rolled her eyes, closing them against the bright white of the ceiling. She'd never liked white—it was blinding, and attracted dust and dirt like nobody's business. Why did hospitals use white, anyway? It must be so hard to get the blood out.

* * *

It only – heh, _only_ – took her a week, with lots of help from Kabuto, to get herself into shape to start actually training again. Inner Sakura and Obito still hadn't shown up, and Sakura was worried. It wasn't as though she could just find someone sufficiently high-ranking and ask "Hey, do you know where my inner self and the ghost who's borrowing some of my mental space are? They haven't said anything in a while, and I'm worried!" That would have been nice, but if she talked to the people who might actually know anything about such things, they'd diagnose her with MPD and fling a councilor at her before banning her from any kind of missions, even D-rank.

And, apart from everything else, Sakura's pride just couldn't stomach that, thankyouverymuch.

So instead, she talked to the Monument. Or rather, at it. She'd run her fingers over every inch of it by now, wondered about most of the names, and found several she recognized. Most prominently, Uchiha Obito...which she'd seen there before, come to think of it. But at the time, Sakura had been too busy to notice one more name carved in stone, and hadn't remembered long enough to connect it with the voice of the guy in her head. Well, it explained how he knew so much about the Uchiha, at any rate. And that comment about the books...they were probably made so no one but an Uchiha could take them out of the compound. And while _she_ wasn't an Uchiha, Obito _was_.

Of course, the details of how that would work were mostly fuzzy, and the rest not there at all, but it _might_ work. Maybe.

Laughing and shaking her head, Sakura walked up the side of the crater she'd made with her more..._destructive_ training techniques. It was time to go stare at the Monument Stone again, and talk at it a bit. She'd worked her daily 'go-have-a-one-sided-conversation-with-the-hunk-of-rock' time around Kakashi's schedule, making sure she wouldn't run into him. Or, for that matter, the tours of the little bitty academy students that visited once for each group of kids. It would be rather embarrassing to be stumbled upon talking to and staring at a _rock_ of all things. Not that Kakashi didn't stare at it a lot, but at least he didn't talk to it. Or act like it was answering back.

Walking, Sakura remembered the time she'd first seen the monument. Naruto had been absent that day, she recalled. Midori-sensei had told the class he'd been home with a stomachache. It had loomed over her tiny form, so big and dark. Very intimidating. And then Midori-sensei had told them all that all those kanji carved on the black surface were the names of dead heroes. Heroes. What did that word mean, anyway? The Yondaime was a hero, certainly. But why did they only carve the names of glorious heroes on the monument? Why didn't the names of more inglorious heroes (such as those couragous souls willing to deal with a whole classfull of children all by themselves) appear on it?

Brushing these thoughts away, Sakura stretched out on the grass, tracing the kanji of half-familiar (by now) names. Naruto had been back here recently, she noticed. Zabuza and Haku's names were clearly visible. That was good.

Half-sitting now, she ran her fingers over the only two truly defaced names on the entire thing, the ones that had caught her attention before. The first was Hatake-something, who'd been partly chipped off. Poor guy—or girl. Dead, and someone tried to destroy their name on the register of dead heroes, the most important record of great ninja in all of Konoha. The second was 'Wind', whose name had been overwritten. Was the person who did it trying to say that it was someone else who'd done the thing 'Wind' had taken credit for? Or that 'Wind' had two names?

It was warm, out there in the sunlight. Sakura fell asleep, tired from training, and dreamed.

--

She was back in the not-there place, where nothing remained of the ice girl but shards of the block that had encased her, and the pick Sakura had dropped from numb fingers the last time she'd been there.

"Lovely. My muscles are going to be atrophied again, aren't they? Perfect. Wonderful." She picked up a shard of ice, noticing that it was more like glass, even though she'd been sure of the material before. Something weird was going on here...

"Nah. You'll wake up in an hour or so."

Sakura spun round. "Inner?!"

The girl who'd just appeared – or more likely, been _noticed_ – in front of Outer Sakura nodded. "Yeah."

"What happened to you?"

Inner Sakura smirked. "Backlash. I'm afraid neither I nor Obito will be quite as...active for a while."

Outer Sakura's face twisted a little as she voiced her thoughts. "What the hell is going on?"

"Can't" — yawn — "tell you that, I'm afraid. Good call on breaking the ice, though. Lots of things will be easier for you now...and lots of other things a whole fuckload harder."

"Who was she?"

Inner Sakura laughed. It was not a nice laugh, but lacked the usual spine-tingling edges of evil/despairing/other-negative-emotion-inspired laughs. "Who you could have been. And never will be." She yawned again. "Shit, this is hard. Let's go back to sleep, Outer."

"Sure."

* * *

Sakura woke up to the feeling of prickly grass on her back, and someone shaking her. She sat up faster than most people ran, and her – assailant? Awakener? Rescuer? Something – flinched backwards. She nearly went for her kunai holster before seeing him clearly.

"Oh...sorry, Naruto."

He laughed ruefully, rubbing the back of his head. "Eheheh, it's fine. But you should be more careful, Sakura-chan! You could get attacked, or catch a cold, or something!"

She shook her head. "Don't worry, I'm fine. Sooo...how have you been getting along with your chakra control?"

Naruto definitely noticed her subject switch, but seemed to brush it off. They walked to Ichiraku Ramen, chatting and laughing. As Sakura momentarily pushed aside her trained-in good manners and slurped at her ramen, she felt relieved. She didn't know when she'd replaced Sasuke as the 'loner' of their group, but at least Naruto liked spending time with her. She should really spend more time with them just being friends—or teammates, whichever.

_You don't have to like someone to love them. I guess that's true for friendship as well._

Smiling, she glanced at Naruto slurping down his noodles. That sight used to disgust her, but now she was almost used to it. "Ne, Naruto...could you help me out with my taijutsu?"

--

Omake:

Sakura, Naruto, and Deidara are all horrible at shougi.

Shikamaru, Sarutobi, and (surprisingly) Genma are all brilliant at it.

Kakashi, Asuma, Sasori, and Kakuzu have middling skills.

Nobody knows if Itachi and Zetsu are any good at it — they always insist on playing Go instead.

Pein is the only one — except, perhaps, Konan — who can actually follow their games, much less the discussions afterwards.

* * *

A/N: Well, that sucked didn't it. Hopefully not too much. The _real_ reason this is a separate chapter is because there's a timeskip of about one and a half months between this and the next. I'm enjoying working on this story again, but I also love the others I'm working on. Perhaps there'll even be enough to post of one soon.

I have noticed that an amusing or humorous plea for reviews often does draw them. However, I am much too tired to make any such thing right now. Instead...

Monkeys!

...I needed that.


	8. The Return of Blondie Guy

A/N: Yeah, this took a while. Mostly because I've hit a bit of a stumbling block with this story, so until I can get past that I only have what I've already written. Besides which, my writing style has changed a bit since I wrote this, so after a few more chapters (and after I get past the block) you'll probably notice some difference. (This fic is definitely going to get a rewrite someday. Next year, maybe.)

Warnings: Sakura steals something, Sasuke shows that yes, he does have a 'surprised' expression, and Inner Sakura swears upon receiving some rather unexpected news. Oh, and Sakura does _not_ die or get captured. In this chapter, at least.

Still no romance.

* * *

"Now!" Kabuto hissed at her. Sakura scrambled through the last window just before the next guard came into sight. Phew. Safe, for now.

I can't believe you're helping him with this.

_You either, huh?_

Not exactly. I just didn't think you were the sort of person to have fun.

_Fun?!_

Yeah. You know, running around blowing stuff up and that.

_..._

She glanced around. Nothing in sight—fair enough.

"Kai!"

Nothing—wait, not nothing. One shelf on the far left appeared slightly different. Sakura glanced around again. _Man, some days you just wish you had the Byakugan._ Oh well. There weren't likely to be more than three or four more traps, there being a great deal of security on the outside. Oh well, best to start off basic...

"Kai!"

One trap revealed, previously under cover of a genjutsu other than the one concealing the shelf. This one was perilously close to where she'd been about to step. Sakura moved on, performing "Kai" every other step or so just to be on the safe side. After getting rid of a few more, she finally was at the shelf. Detecting no other traps, she removed the books from the shelf, finding a carved design behind them. _Blood? No, perhaps..._ Sakura looked closer. A-_ha_!

Once more. "Kai!"

_Excellent._ The apparently seamless wood split apart in the centre, rolling back to reveal the Scroll of Seals, record of all Konoha Kinjutsu.

**Let's get out of here. I have a bad—**

_Don't say it! That's like a beacon call for Fate to dump acid rain all over your parade!_

Alas, it was too late. The door to the room slammed open, revealing an irate and sleepy-looking Sandaime. Sakura reacted instinctively, with a blinding flash of light that required only a single handseal.

And suddenly, Kabuto was there. He took one glance at the scene and muttered something, before grabbing Sakura and shunshin-ing away.

Breathing hard, even though they were now on the outskirts of Konoha, Sakura asked, "How screwed are we? On a scale of one to ten?"

Kabuto took off his glasses and delicately polished them on the hem of his shirt. "Honestly? Nine and a half. Less, if I manage to go back there and move our Hokage-sama back to bed. With any luck, he'll think it was a dream."

Sakura's breathing began to calm, though it was still ragged. "Anything I can do to help?"

He smirked, gently settling his glasses back on his nose. "Well... you can fill in for my shift at the hospital tomorrow."

She laughed, the noise spiraling up into the night.

* * *

"Sakura, you might not want to go out today." Her mother was home in the morning, for once, and baking muffins.

"Why not?" It seemed like a pretty normal day outside—not that Sakura would know, not _being_ outside.

Sakura's mother held up a note with the hand not stirring the muffin batter. "I would assume these were sent out to everyone. It must be chaos out there."

Sakura herself glanced out the window to the calm street. "Why?"

"You don't know? Sakura, the Hokage was unable to be roused this morning. He's still alive, but the medic-nin say he's in a coma. They're investigating it right now."

* * *

The other medical workers didn't even blink when Sakura showed up to work in Kabuto's stead. She'd subbed for him once or twice before, on days when the work was simple and he couldn't be bothered to warn his employers beforehand. They showed her a stack of notes taken by the medics who'd already checked out the Sandaime and the ANBU who'd examined his room. Sakura winced. Not that they hadn't expected the ANBU to go on the hunt when Konoha's scroll of kinjutsu came up missing, but she and Kabuto had planned on that being _later_. If any of the ANBU discovered the Hokage had gotten up because of a tripped alarm in that room...well, chakra signatures weren't that hard to track, if they were fairly fresh and the trackee was close by. She'd be arrested in a heartbeat, having used 'Kai' several times, and the first Hikari jutsu that came to her mind when the Sandaime showed up.

Yup, definitely some record-fudging in order. But not now, with everyone watching her. Sakura put down the notes and nodded. "What can I do to help?"

Apparently Morino Ibiki and his interrogation squad had still not given up and 'trusted' Kabuto fully. But they _had_ allowed him to be put on the team examining and researching on the Hokage—albeit not to do much. Sakura basically acted as a go-fer, fetching books, notes, and lab instruments for the regular medics. She guessed it was more for appearances than anything, Kabuto being one of the best medic-nins in Konoha it would look very strange if he was barred from something this important.

_Kabuto...he must have gotten the message as well. Will he fix the records to show the Scroll Room has already been covered, or does he believe the ANBU will be slow enough that it won't be necessary?_

* * *

Kazama Takashi leant back innocently against the wall. His Chuunin friend had been suddenly taken ill, but had vouched for his skills as a guard and requested that 'Takashi' be allowed to co-guard the Council meeting with Izumo, who was leaning against the wall on the other side of the doorway. Looking very bored.

Heh. Didn't he realize the kind of information he could gain from such a post?

'Takashi' tuned his senses to the...discussion going on inside the room.

"Absolutely not! We _must_ have Tsunade. She is one of the few strong enough to be our Kage in these troubled times, and perhaps the only one suited to the job."

"There has been no news of her for months, none. Besides, we have no time! There must be a new, _legal_ leader before—"

Sadly, this bit of information was not revealed, being cut off by yet another voice.

"We should follow the plans laid out by the Sandaime in case of such an event as we have here. I agree with you that he is not the most..._suitable_ of candidates, but he will have to do for now. Besides, only the current leader of Konoha can open the scroll containing the name of Sarutobi-sama's preferred successor... unfortunately."

"Anyone else find it a little _suspicious_ that nobody knows anything about the Godaime Hokage the Sandaime wanted us to have?"

"They could be underage. That would make sense with what we know, scroll and all. Especially if you see the temporary leader Sarutobi-sama listed as a regent, rather than a fill-in for no reason."

"Hey, did anybody think to use a sound-dampening jutsu on this place?"

Damn. There went the rest of his information...

Oh well, it would have to be enough for now. He could probably figure out the new 'Hokage-they-were-_supposed_-to-have' with some research and guesswork. But what on earth could they be planning that required a new leader before it went through?

* * *

When Sakura returned home, she found a note pinned to her door with a kunai. _Tomorrow morning, at the Hokage's office... huh?_

**Maybe our team's been assigned to something involving the Sandaime's coma.**

_Wouldn't they use ANBU for something like that?_

**Probably...that's why I said MAYBE.**

Exhausted from a long day of running around handing stuff to people and keeping her chakra senses up to 'full', Sakura dropped into bed and fell asleep before she could get under the covers.

The next morning, she was woken bright and early by a chorus of birds chirping outside her window. Groaning, she tossed a couple shuriken at them. The stupid things just kept on chirping!

"Ye gods, why won't they shut the hell up?"

Growling various obscenities, Sakura pushed herself out of bed and got dressed. It was only as she was beginning a leisurely breakfast that she remembered. Kakashi. Hokage's office. Now. Great. Just lovely—this morning was just _perfect_. She jogged out of her house, towards the Hokage Tower. Sakura winced slightly as she caught up with her teammates, careful to walk next to Naruto rather than Sasuke. She'd been experiencing odd mood swings around Sasuke since she'd woken up from her week-long sleep.

Mood swings like, say, the sudden and inexplicable urge to beat him in to unconsciousness while laughing sadistically. Yeah. Those kinds of mood swings.

Actually, they'd been occurring around other people as well—but none so strong nor so often. It was just plain weird, and more than a little disturbing. Really, what the hell?

Eh, there wasn't much she could do about it anyway. It was _possible_ for her to go to a psychologist, or to ask Kabuto for help—but, naturally, she wouldn't. No one was going to poke around in her head, no matter what. Well... except for maybe Inner Sakura and Obito. But they lived there already, so she couldn't do much about it. Besides, whomever she went to, it would take _time_. Lots and lots of very boring time that could and should be used for other things. Sakura supposed it was time to use that old adage: _Ignore it for long enough, and it will go away._ Not a particularly noble sentiment, but one that would probably work in this case, if very few others.

They'd reached the Hokage Tower. Naruto happily bounded through the hallways, Sasuke gliding behind him like some sort of ice skater, and Sakura...well, she just plain walked. Fast, though.

Naruto flung open the door of the Hokage's office...and the entirety of Team Seven stopped and stared.

Well, not _quite_ the entirety.

"Yo." Kakashi was sitting in the chair reserved for the governor of Konoha, scanning through an official-looking piece of paper before putting it down on the desk and scribbling his name on the bottom.

It only took a few minutes for his students to metaphorically pick their jaws up off the floor. Naruto spent those few minutes (okay, more like ten) gibbering and stammering. Sasuke's mouth was hanging open slightly (a major sign of surprise from him), and Sakura was simply looking at him with a deadpan face.

And looking.

And looking.

And—

Then she blinked once, very slowly, before resetting her face back into its normal happy-ish – was that even a word? – configuration. Not completely sure how to react to his female student's...erm, reaction, Kakashi merely eye-smiled and hummed as he picked up another piece of paperwork.

Sakura's eyebrow twitched.

Kakashi ignored her.

This time, both her hands twitched.

He continued ignoring her.

"Katon: Gokakyuu no—"

Sakura was now lying flat on her back, Kakashi sitting on her stomach and pinning her arms – and more importantly, hands – away from each other to be sure she couldn't make handseals. Inner Sakura was jumping up and down in the back of her head and squealing at their positions, she could _feel_ it.

Kakashi was scowling at her. She didn't know exactly how she knew this through the thick mask, but Sakura could tell he was scowling at her.

"Do you have **any idea** how much MORE paperwork I would have if that deskfull was destroyed? _Do you?!_"

Sakura blinked. Paperwork. Her sensei was worried about paperwork. Waaaaaait a second...

"_You_ would have?"

Kakashi abruptly switched moods, eye-smiling almost faster than she could blink. "I would have thought you'd have figured it out already, oh bright and clever student of mine."

Oh, she had. It had left her mind reeling far enough that she'd just not reacted at all. By the looks of them, Sasuke and Naruto were still in that limbo.

Sakura closed her eyes and groaned, banging her head gently against the floor a few times. **Well, fuck,** announced Inner Sakura.

Konoha was totally doomed, if the Council Elders had selected _Kakashi_ to be the next Hokage.

* * *

Kabuto hummed to himself, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He was with a new, cooperative team, the endless rain had finally stopped, and it was only another two days until the next Chuunin Exam started and he could gather even more information about the newest batch of ninja. Life was good.

Of course, whenever you think that, it immediently isn't. Kabuto had to duck into a nearby building to avoid a sudden and inexplicable hail of tinsnippers, before having to leave through a window due to the angry gourmet chef with the cleaver. (Nice cleaver, though. High carbon steel, non-stainless. The best kind.) The window overlooked a small stream he was _certain_ hadn't been there before, but Kabuto managed to land on top of it. Of course, then he wished he hadn't—because water-skier bugs the approximate size of an office are something no one wants to deal with.

Half an hour later, he struggled out of the pile of foam rubber mice that had mysteriously ('mysteriously' his ass) appeared from nowhere, cursing.

"Damn you, Hatake Kakashi!"

This was all _his_ fault, Kabuto just knew it.

Of course, two seconds after he thought that, things seemed to be going well again. Strange how that sort of thing just kept on happening. If Kabuto remembered correctly, this was due to something called 'universal humour'.

It could be damned inconvenient at times.

Just in case, he ducked into a nearby casino. Lots of things could go wrong in a casino, but most of them only happened if you were actually gambling—which Kabuto most certainly did not plan on doing. Instead, he got directions to the bar. Just one drink never hurt anyone, and certainly not someone who'd learned how to purge the excess alcohol from his system if necessary.

To Kabuto's surprise, there was a well-endowed blonde at the bar, getting drunk. Now this was not unusual in and of itself—there were undoubtedly many well-endowed blondes in many bars all over the world getting drunk at this very minute. The strange thing was that he recognized her from somewhere—and certainly not from this kind of setting.

Another strange thing was the crying brunette sitting next to her. Again, this was not particularly unusual. However, the brunette was apparently crying about the fact that the blonde had gambled away all their money and was drinking too much, rather than the usual 'my boyfriend dumped me blah blah blah' deal.

Hmm...

Kabuto picked a seat fairly close to them, and tried to remember what this had sparked in his mind.

Two drinks (on his end) later, it clicked. He turned to the brunette. "Would you like some help getting Lady Tsunade home?"

* * *

Sakura nearly whistled, but managed to restrain herself from blowing her cover. She knew Naruto would _love_ these—although she'd weeded out the explosives-teaching ones. No need to destroy the village just because she gave a teammate some interesting scrolls.

Sneaking through town to Naruto's apartment was a great test of her stealth skills. Of course, she could always have just given it to him the next day, but what would be the fun in that? Besides, a fairly large number of high-ranking shinobi lived in his neighbourhood, so going unnoticed was tough.

Just as she was about to set the carefully-wrapped and -labeled package down by his door, Sakura froze. There were voices coming from inside his apartment, and neither of them belonged to her friend.

"A review of why Leader let you do this would be helpful."

"Because the other family branches would utterly destroy us if we proceeded with the Kyuubi extraction, un. Killing a scion of the clan would be enough reason to hunt us all down to the last man, but the de facto head of a branch? The family medic-nin have figured out miniaturized explosions in the brain, last I heard. Ouch, yeah?"

"I do not see why we should be afraid of one clan."

"It ain't one clan, un. They could make up an entire Hidden Village by themselves, and are all damn powerful besides. Usually none of them care what we do, but if it gets one, just /one/ member of any family hurt—the Kazama can be worse than wolves. Get the _wolves_ mad and they just kill you, yeah?"

"..." The silence clearly said that the speaker in question still didn't think it was worth it, but believed it beneath himself to say so.

"I hate it here."

"Stop _whining_, Deidara."

"Uh, Itachi? Codename here, un. This conversation is revealing enough to any listeners or their devices without disclosing my identity!"

"Congratulations, _Takashi_. And now you've blown mine, too."

"It's all your fault for not telling me your codename, un." Now Taka—no, _Deidara's_ voice was sulky. Like Naruto last year after she'd turned his offer of a date down for the 563rd time.

Waitasec. Itachi. _Uchiha_ Itachi. Uh-oh...

"Live with it. You're going to be here for at least three more years, according to Leader-sama, so get used to being in this place."

Sakura didn't wait to hear any more. She'd probably be caught and killed anyway, but it would be nice to get out of there first. Besides, she could at least get her errand done before dying. With the utmost care, she set down the present right where Naruto would see it in the morning when he woke up and left. Now, how to hide from the S-class criminal on the other side of that door...

Just turning around and sneaking away was not really an option. He'd spot her from a mile away. Finding an open door and ducking inside was also out of the question.

Look, let _me_ handle this.

_Obito? It's been a while._

Yeah, yeah, now let me do this before we all get killed!

_Sure._

Not that we're not going to die _anyway_ if what you've told me about him being an S-class criminal now is true, but I might be able to delay our death a few minutes.

_Obito!_

What?

Sakura's body, now controled by Obito, carefully and gently picked up Naruto's present again. She—he—whatever, used all their stealth skills to walk, with as little impact and sound as possible, back down the hall and stairs. There she (yes, she) sighed heavily, tugging on one pink strand of hair.

To Henge or not to Henge? Not, Obito decided. If they played this right it would look better without—and one Naruto fangirl in the world was plenty. She dangled the package by its ribbons from one hand before slipping her geta back on and walking back up the staircase, humming softly. If she clomped loudly, he might suspect she was faking it, and if Obito tiptoed she might slip back into her well-trained 'hide-from-everything' mode. Cute, naïve, and slightly stupid was the way to go—a typically incompetent genin. She smiled slightly—there, that was good.

Your usual boy-crazy thirteen-year-old girl, made it through the Academy on sheer luck and adorableness. There we go.

At the top of the stairs she paused, twirling one pink lock while staring off into space. Then Obito very obviously pulled herself back to reality with a start, and skipped down the hall, humming 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' to herself. A few feet away from Naruto's door, it opened to reveal a tall man with dark hair, but no particular distinguishing features. Henged, perhaps. Obito covered her open mouth in surprise with the hand not holding the Naruto's present.

"Why are you here, kunoichi?"

Her eyes widened slightly. "I – I was just delivering a present to Naruto...this is his apartment, r-right?"

The dark-haired man – could this really be Obito's little cousin Itachi? This probably wasn't what he really looked like, but still – raised an eyebrow.

"Yes."

"Oh!" Obito made a gesture of realization, slowly moving the hand that had been previously covering Sakura's mouth through the air and nodding. "You must be one of Takashi-san's friends, then. Okay!" She smiled brightly again. "Thanks for telling me! I wasn't sure of the apartment number. Night night!"

Bright smile still pasted on Sakura's face, Obito flipped her hair over her shoulder with one hand before waving at Itachi, then turning and skipping back down the hall. Once they were out of sight – and hopefully, out of Itachi's mind – he let Sakura take control again.

_Thanks, Obito. I owe you one._

You're welcome...and I'll hold you to that. He'd maybe over-done it a bit, but whatever.

* * *

Kabuto sighed. He really had to find some way to get out of Orochimaru's debt—it was very hindering. It would be wonderful to learn from the great healer Tsunade-hime, but his current situation with the legendary Snake Sannin made that impossible. There had to be _some_ way to publicly assist Orochimaru with one single great deed that would mean the Snake sannin would _have_ to release him, or risk making enemies of all.

A ninjutsu that would create food from air... he snickered quietly. Yeah right. Maybe it _would_ be possible to invent something that would force someone to speak only the truth—the interrogators' Holy Grail. Of course, whatever he did would also have to meet the criteria of not pissing off his other clients. This was going to take quite a bit of work...

...Or maybe he could just off the bastard.

Sighing again, Kabuto shook himself out of his thoughts. That was for later. He pushed himself out of the chair he'd settled into. "Shizune-san, I apologize for imposing on your hospitality. And... Tsunade-hime needs a place to settle down and think about what she really wants to do, I think. Will you help her find that?"

Good deed for the month done, Kabuto bowed and swept out of Tsunade's hotel. Outside the door he paused for a moment... Nope. No rains of frogs. Perhaps he was safe for the time being.

_Then again, _Kabuto thought as he narrowly dodged a random charging tiger, _perhaps not._

* * *

A/N: No, Kakashi isn't really Hokage. Sakura just assumed that he was, because he's the person who gets to sit and sign all the paperwork until they get a real Hokage. And when Konoha's unofficial ruling council spoke of the candidate being 'underage', they didn't mean he or she was too young but rather that they were too inexperienced, or not yet a jounin (which, in this universe at least, is probably a requirement for being Hokage). The Kabuto thing is probably unconsciously borrowed (didn't realize it when I wrote it) from a very good and funny Kakashi/Female Naruto fic called 'Excuses'.

...This story needs a rewrite. Eventually. Updates, as stated above, will probably be slow for quite some time — at least, until I get back to working on this thing. Meanwhile, do go read my other writings, especially 'Sunset', and the soon-to-be-posted 'Backwards'. (Both of which are busy sucking up all my attention that is not taken up by editing, reading, and violin-playing.)

Oh, and another reason for the delay is that I have recently gotten obsessed with a wonderful, wonderful author of whom you have probably heard. If not, go read something by him AT ONCE. Lord Dunsany's writing is perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever read, especially the short story collection 'A Dreamer's Tales'. If you have not yet read that book, your life is more hollow and barren than it need be.

...Did you catch the Harry Potter and Ranma references in this chapter?


End file.
